{"id":37856,"date":"2013-05-18T13:37:56","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T10:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=37856"},"modified":"2013-05-18T13:37:56","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T10:37:56","slug":"rob-ford-crackmayor-of-toronto-accused-of-using-cocaine-canada-news-37856","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/rob-ford-crackmayor-of-toronto-accused-of-using-cocaine-canada-news-37856\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Ford Crack:Mayor of Toronto accused of using cocaine \/ Canada News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Toronto<\/a><\/h1>\n

The Mayor of Canada’s largest city\u00a0Toronto has denied allegations he has been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.<\/h1>\n

Rob Ford called the claims “ridiculous” as he addressed a swarm of reporters outside his house in Canada’s biggest city.<\/p>\n

The denial came after gossip site Gawker and the Toronto Star published articles saying they had been offered a video of the alleged smoking session.<\/p>\n

Both outlets said they declined to pay the $100,000 (\u00a365,930) price tag wanted by a person with the mobile phone footage.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Star claimed the Mayor smoked drugs with purported drug dealers and that the allegations related to events in the last six months.<\/p>\n

The newspaper said the video showed the politician “sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe”.<\/p>\n

It said two of its reporters watched the video three times – but admitted it cannot verify the authenticity of the clip.<\/p>\n

However it said it did appear to “clearly show the Mayor in a well-lit room”.<\/p>\n

Mr Ford said on Friday that the claims were “absolutely not true”.<\/p>\n

“These allegations are ridiculous, another story with respect to the Toronto Star going after me,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And that’s all I’ve got to say for now.”<\/p>\n

The Star said those trying to sell the video were involved in the Toronto drug trade.<\/p>\n

The Mayor has battled a series of negative articles in recent months but still has an approval rating of around 50%.<\/p>\n

However, that is down from 70% in the year after he took power, according to Forum Research.<\/p>\n

A Toronto Police spokesman said officers are “closely monitoring the situation”.<\/p>\n

Approached by the news service Reuters, Mr Ford’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comments.<\/p>\n

“We’re just trying to see whether or not such a video exists and whether or not any video has been doctored or altered,” Dennis Morris told the Toronto Sun newspaper.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, US-based Gawker is asking for donations in what it has labelled a “Crackstarter” campaign to raise $200,000 (\u00a3130,000) to buy the video and post it online.<\/p>\n

It said it has already raised $28,000 (\u00a318,000).<\/p>\n

Mr Ford, 43, was elected in 2010 on a promise to “stop the gravy train” at Toronto’s City Hall but he has frequently attracted unfavourable news coverage.<\/p>\n

Stories include a conflict of interest case that almost cost him his job, a photograph of him reading documents while driving on a motorway, and an altercation with a reporter on a patch of land outside his house.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week he was cleared of breaching a by-law after sticking magnetic business cards with his home phone number on – as part of his tactic to be accessible to voters – on cars in the city.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mayor of Canada’s largest city Toronto has denied allegations he has been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,80,63,1,118,14],"tags":[3748,4263,51817,233,51819,51813,51820,51818,51814,51812,51810,51811,10220,51821,51816,51815,51809,51822,10419,77150],"class_list":["post-37856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-world","tag-canada","tag-cocaine","tag-cocaine-and-crack-cocaine","tag-ford","tag-gawker-com","tag-mayor-of-toronto-accused-using-cocaine","tag-politics-and-government","tag-rob","tag-rob-ford-cocaine","tag-rob-ford-crack","tag-rob-ford-mayor","tag-rob-ford-toronto","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-ontario","tag-toronto-matyor-cocaine-video","tag-toronto-mayor-cocaine","tag-toronto-mayor-crack","tag-toronto-star","tag-u-s","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}