Caught on tape: did Rob Ford just offer to buy OxyContin on the street for one of his constituents?

Caught on tape: did Rob Ford just offer to buy OxyContin on the street for one of his constituents?

Remember when Rob Ford tried to put his insensitive comments about AIDS behind him by personally apologizing to an HIV-positive man and his husband, and it was super-awkward? The Star reporter who arranged the whole thing called it “a slightly bizarre scene,” but he hadn’t seen anything yet. Ford and Dieter Doneit-Henderson have stayed in touch, and now their relationship has taken a turn for the worse. According to the Star, the Ford campaign has reported Doneit-Henderson to the police and asked for an investigation after receiving harassing e-mails and—here’s the good part—Ford was involved in a recorded phone conversation in which he appears to suggest his constituent pick up some OxyContin on the street. Xtra got a hold of the tape—listen here.

The Sun’s take:

Later in the conversation Doneit-Henderson asks if Ford himself can find him some OxyContin, and Ford responds more than once that he’ll try, asking how much it goes for on the street.

“Why don’t you go on the street and score it?” Ford says in the tape.

When the man suggests he needs only two or three or four of the pills to “kill the pain,” Ford asks him to leave it with him and he’ll “ask people on the street” to see what he can do.

Ford says he never intended to buy any hillbilly heroin and was simply trying to end a clearly uncomfortable conversation. Perfectly credible, given that the image of Ford trying to buy drugs “on the street” is hilarious and would scream “narc” to any dealer worth his salt. But here’s a useful rule of thumb for campaign managers the world over: any day that starts with your candidate denying a plan to illegally purchase narcotics is a bad day.

Now that we’ve had “Rob Ford” and “drug tape” in the same headlines, we should all hope that this doesn’t get taken to the next level: “Rob Ford” and “sex tape.”

• Ford feels ‘set up’ by drug tape [Toronto Sun]
• Ford complains to police about recipient of AIDS apology [Toronto Star]