Jury hears Cosby’s testimony about drugs

NORRISTOWN, PA. — Jurors on Wednesday began hearing Bill Cosby’s explosive testimony about giving Quaaludes to women before sex — an old admission that’s taken on new significance at the comedian’s sexual assault retrial after a half-dozen women testified that he drugged and violated them.

A police detective started reading a transcript of the 2005 testimony as prosecutors saved for the very end of their case Cosby’s own words about using the 1970s party drug “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.’ ”

“Quaaludes happen to be the drug that kids, young people were using to party with, and there were times when I wanted to have them just in case,” Cosby testified in the deposition, given as part of a lawsuit chief accuser Andrea Constand filed against him.

Cosby settled the lawsuit in 2006 for nearly $3.4 million. Cosby, now 80, is being retried on charges he drugged and molested Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He says their encounter was consensual.

The deposition was also read at Cosby’s first trial, which ended with a hung jury last year.

In a transcript, Cosby said he obtained seven prescriptions for Quaaludes from his doctor in the 1970s, ostensibly for a sore back.

The drug was banned in the U.S. in 1982, the same year one of the women who testified, Janice Baker-Kinney, alleges Cosby knocked her out with pills and then raped her.

Judge Steven O’Neill ruled Tuesday that prosecutors could have the “Cosby Show” star’s deposition testimony read into the record, handing them a key victory in their effort to portray the comedian as a serial predator.