Rob Ford's Year of Living Dangerously

This morning, Rob Ford admitted what we already knew: that he has smoked crack cocaine. “Exactly,” the Toronto mayor replied when asked, for the 10,000th time, if he has smoked crack. “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine.” But how did we finally get here? Let's look back.

In May, Gawker editor John Cook traveled to Toronto and—proving the necessity of the mainstream press and local newspapers—published his account of watching Rob Ford smoking crack on video. The Toronto Star, whose reporters had also seen the video, followed suit, and Toronto found itself in the midst of a scandal. Rob Ford quickly denied smoking crack, calling the allegations "ridiculous."

Two days later, in an attempt to purchase the video of Rob Ford smoking crack, we started a Crackstarter, which, while ultimately unsuccessful, did raise nearly $200,000 for Toronto charities.

About one week after the initial report, Rob Ford held a press conference assuring Torontonians that he was no longer actively smoking crack cocaine, though he stopped short of saying he had never smoked crack cocaine. Meanwhile, the person shopping the Rob Ford crack video disappeared, and the home where the video was filmed was broken into by a pipe-wielding thug.

The Toronto police became involved (or, as it turned out, more involved), raiding a neighborhood known as "the ground zero for the Rob Ford crack video," in part because they'd heard about the existence of the video before we broke the story (in fact, they were watching John Cook as he watched the Rob Ford crack video in a Toronto parking lot in May).

Some time passed, and the story died down. Life returned to normal for the mayor, who got shitfaced in public and ranted about either cologne or cocaine. He arm-wrestled Hulk Hogan. Later in the summer, one of the mayor's close friends was arrested on drug charges.

Last week, the story became front page news again. On Thursday, the Toronto police announced they were investigating Ford's drug habit and were in possession of the video showing him smoking crack cocaine. Rob Ford held a “spooky” press conference, telling reporters that he would not resign, though he refused to directly address the most recent allegations. On Sunday, Ford promised to stop getting “hammered,” though he again made no reference to his use of crack cocaine.

Then, this morning, in an impromptu press conference, Ford finally admitted that he smoked crack, saying he probably did so while in a "drunken stupor."


Don't smoke crack.