NATION : Barry Denies Story of Drug Use
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WASHINGTON — The office of District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry today branded as “character assassination” a televised report that Barry was hospitalized for treatment of a drug overdose in 1983.
WUSA-TV said Monday that it had obtained a police report quoting a Howard University Hospital physician as saying Barry was hospitalized for a drug overdose.
Psychiatrist Alyce Gullattee, who directs the hospital’s Institute of Drug Abuse and Addiction, was interviewed twice by police investigators in June, 1984, the station said.
“When Mayor Marion Barry was hospitalized (at Howard) . . . his illness was the result of an overdose of drugs (cocaine) that occurred while he was in the company of a female companion who also overdosed,” Gullattee told police, according to the report.
“Barry overdosed a second time; however, he was taken to the District of Columbia General Hospital for treatment,” she was quoted as saying.
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