By John Owen

Yes your honor, I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have never smoked a joint. Years ago, I told myself I might one day try marijuana, but only after I had figured out all the mystical properties of a dry martini. And my research on gin and vermouth continues in that area.

I imagine Rick Steves has smoked a joint or two, but I would hesitate to cast him in a leading role for the movie "Reefer Madness."

As he testified recently at Edmonds Center for the Arts, Steves would not smoke a marijuana cigarette in front of his college-age offspring. He does not recommend the practice to them or to anyone else, except perhaps late-stage cancer patients.

But he clearly thinks many of our laws concerning marijuana are stupid, and extract an unacceptable toll on our citizens, on our young people and on public revenues, a view he shares with the American Civil Liberties Union, which participated in the "marijuana conversation" Steves organized recently in Edmonds.

He'll be criticized again. Steves was condemning the invasion of Iraq when a lot of his friends and neighbors refused to buy "French fries" under that name, because of Parisian opposition to the Bush foreign policy.

More recently, Steves has been showing a film he made in Iran, trying to put faces and personalities to residents, and possible targets, of Middle East conflicts.

More than once, critics have warned him because of his sometimes controversial views that they will never buy another travel book under his name, or join in any of the tours to "Europe Through the Back Door," which he organized and runs.

"I usually tell them that if they really feel that way, Europe will probably be more fun without them," he says with a deadpan expression.

My wife and I have participated in "Backdoor" tours to several European sites and, in fact, blue noses are in short supply on ETBD excursions.

Steves' travel philosophy is simple and rewarding. It's fine to brag about your own country, but open your eyes to the realization that Europeans can teach us a lot about the past and current history of the world.

So his guides expose American travelers to the Italian Riviera, to Paris, London, Dublin, Belfast, to picnics in the Alps, to a "pub crawl" in Venice and to the sites of German concentration camps.

If you ask, Steves would be able to point out several "coffee shops" in Amsterdam where the air is blue with the smoke from legal marijuana.

I heard a member of Steves' Lutheran congregation privately express the view that he is a man of his convictions, but that they prefer the local church not be linked directly with everything he says or believes. It's a policy that seems to work for him and for them.

The Steves' son attends Notre Dame, their daughter studies at Georgetown, Rick and his wife Anne have recently visited both of them and report that alcohol, not marijuana, seems to be the passion and the problem on most campuses today.

On his TV shows, we have seen this one-time Edmonds piano teacher quaff a beaker or three of German Riesling. I may ask him to expand his research and to summarize a position paper on dry martinis.

Keep your eye out for "Previews of Coming Attractions" at Edmonds Center for the Arts.