It has gotten to the point that NDC presidential candidate, John Evans Atta Mills has to come on radio, from his temporary base in South Africa, to say "I'm not speaking from a cemetery. I'm talking to you from my hotel room. I'm well and fit. Atta Mills is not dead!" From discussions at bars afterwards, not even his own voice could kill the suspicion created by the minacious mind which pulled that practical joke on the NDC. [continues 2218 words]
Labour Tony Blair: "The only thing my father really drummed into me was never to take drugs. And anyway, I was doing so many other things that I never needed to." John Reid, former Home Secretary, after a "minuscule" amount of cannabis resin was found in his Scottish home last year: "I have no idea where it came from, or when. There is absolutely no suggestion that this in any way involves me or members of my family and both I and Strathclyde Police regard the matter as closed." [continues 321 words]
Once Gordon Brown had announced another review of cannabis classification yesterday, it was inevitable that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would be asked if she had ever used the drug. Like thousands of forty-somethings who were at university in the 1970s and 1980s, she had taken the odd puff. Does it matter? Smoking dope was illegal but Miss Smith was by no means alone in breaking the law. It can be argued that she has been refreshingly candid in admitting to it. [continues 309 words]
Patricia Hewitt has reignited the debate over cannabis after she admitted smoking the drug while she was at university. The Health Secretary became the highest profile Labour figure to come clean about marijuana use prompting criticism about the Government's mixed messages on drugs. Miss Hewitt, who has previously refused to comment when asked if she had tried drugs, insisted that she only tried cannabis once and didn't like it. In an interview with the Independent, she said: "I tried cannabis once when I was a student. It didn't do anything for me and I never tried it again. I've not used any other illegal drug." [continues 683 words]
IN recent year many high-profile MPs have admitted smoking cannabis as students. They include several Tory shadow ministers, including party chairman Francis Maude. Shadow Education Secretary David Willetts said he once tried the drug, as did Oliver Letwin, who heads David Cameron's policy development team. Speaking about cannabis, senior Tory Tim Yeo once said: "I don't share the view that it was disagreeable. I found it agreeable." Ex-MP Neil Hamilton said of his experience: "I couldn't taste anything." [continues 77 words]
David Cameron was disciplined as a 16-year-old pupil at Eton for smoking cannabis, sources close to the Conservative leader admitted this weekend. Cameron, who has always refused to discuss whether he has used drugs, was reportedly caught up in a police investigation into drug dealing at his school. He was apparently "gated" - confined to school grounds - for two weeks after confessing to a master. A friend said the Tory leader and other schoolboys had been "snitched on" by pupils who had been dealing in the drug. A total of seven pupils were expelled following police inquiries, which are said to have included a search of pupils' rooms by a drugs squad. [continues 415 words]
The revelation of David Cameron's indiscretions at Eton won't shock a public that has grown more tolerant It was the type of story that, 18 months ago, as David Cameron was preparing his run for the Tory leadership, might have stopped him in his tracks. But no more. Cameron has privately told friends that he sees his involvement in a drugs scandal at Eton 25 years ago as a 'wake-up call'. But in public he has been quick to direct his officials to issue a quite different message: an unwavering and unequivocal 'no comment'. 'David felt, and feels, that politicians are entitled to a past before they came into politics. David had a past, and he's not going to be talking about it,' a spokesman said. [continues 1007 words]
David Cameron has supported calls for cannabis to be legalised for medical use provided that clear health benefits can be shown. The Tory leader, who has refused to answer media questions about whether he used drugs before entering politics, ruled out a wider legalisation of cannabis for recreational use. Answering questions on his "webcameron" website, he said: "If it can be proved that there are real benefits, medicinal benefits and scientific evidence for it, I would be relaxed about that. My decision would be to licence it if it could be proved to have benefits." [continues 163 words]
Admitting a youthful dalliance with soft drugs has almost become a rite-of-passage for Britain's politicians in recent years. Everyone from Conservative chairman Francis Maude to home secretary Charles Clarke has owned up to puffing the occasional joint in their youth. Provided the "experimentation" was brief, firmly in the past and subsequently regretted, the story is swiftly forgotten. Yet - as would-be Tory leader David Cameron is finding out - the drugs issue still has the power to land politicians in hot water with the media and party colleagues. [continues 714 words]
Mo Mowlam's unerring ability to cause controversy has survived her. The Northern Ireland secretary and cabinet enforcer has left behind a book, to be published next year, in which she advocates the legalisation of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Such a legacy from a government minister, once given responsibility for the international war on drugs, may provide Tony Blair with a rueful reminder of the controversy she sparked with her admission while in office that she had smoked cannabis at university. [continues 522 words]
The illegal drugs business rakes in more money than 88% of the world's countries. It brings untold deaths and misery to millions. If you were burgled recently, drugs were probably the cause. Isn't it time governments tried a new way of dealing with the problem If your house was burgled last year... if your mobile phone was nicked in the street... if you have bought a dodgy copy of a computer game or DVD... then you have probably been sucked into one of the world's biggest businesses - the drugs business. [continues 1173 words]
Charles Clarke's intention to review David Blunkett's decision of a year ago to downgrade cannabis to a class C drug has left Britain's five million users, not to mention police, medical experts and politicians, more unclear than ever. Is the government U-turn due to genuine health concerns over the drug's link to mental illness, or has it got more to do with the coming election? Walking through clouds of blue cannabis smoke, the policeman did not know what to do. "You just don't have time to stop everybody, not in a place like this," he said at Camden Lock in north London yesterday. "It's all over the place." [continues 1782 words]
As great leaders know only too well, it is best to never be seen in the proximity of an oddly-rolled cigarette. Denials that you ever inhaled are also compulsory. So when the sweet smell of marijuana reached the prime ministerial nostrils at dinner one evening, Tony Blair could have been forgiven for racing from the room. But, as the source of the smoke, film director Robert Altman, reveals in today's Weekend magazine, the relaxed prime minister did no such thing. [continues 311 words]
Continuing human rights abuses have not hindered flow of equipment and advice to Bogota Britain is secretly stepping up military assistance to Colombia as the war on drug trafficking becomes increasingly entangled in the effort to defeat leftwing guerrillas and drive them back to the negotiating table. Despite continuing reports of serious abuses by the security forces and the concerns of human rights groups about President Alvaro Uribe's tactics, Tony Blair has encouraged the Foreign Office to hold an international conference on support for Colombia, beginning today. [continues 1346 words]
Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister responsible for drugs policy, has revealed that she once experimented with cannabis but stressed that its illegal status prevented her from taking it again. Ms Flint, 41, who was appointed to her first ministerial job less than a fortnight ago, admitted that she tried the drug more than 20 years ago as a student. Her remarks came as Iain Duncan Smith pledged that the next Tory government would guarantee a drug rehabilitation place for every young addict in Britain. The Conservative leader promised a tenfold increase in the number of treatment places as he underlined his party's "tough but tender" drugs policy for the general election. Those who refused treatment would face jail. [continues 445 words]
Let's Recognise Reality And Start Selling The Stuff At Off-Licenses A series of gun-related crimes is reported in the press over the last week and, as sure as night follows day, we have an immediate response from the government that it is going to bring forward legislation to increase the penalty for possessing a gun. At a time when our prisons are straining at the seams we have a headline-grabbing policy which may in the short term look good, and in the medium term will probably be either irrelevant or counter-productive. On top of this it is announced that the prime minister is going to take personal control of a new crusade against guns. Visas will monitor Jamaicans travelling to the UK, and instant deportation will face asylum seekers found in possession of such weapons. [continues 730 words]
"House Republicans Thursday unveiled a package of bills to combat drug abuse and vowed to make America virtually drug-free by 2002."- Reuters, May 1998 Welcome to America, 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free where President George Bush insists that casual drug users are financing terrorism, while his niece is caught with crack cocaine in drug rehab. Where one person is arrested approximately every 44 seconds on a marijuana charge. Where 77% of Texas drug convictions are found to involve less than one gram of a drug. [continues 3852 words]
John Grieve on Contrasting Views of the Government's War on Drugs From Keith Hellawell and Philip Bean THE OUTSIDER, by Keith Hellawell, 400pp, HarperCollins, UKP18.99 DRUGS AND CRIME, by Philip Bean, 224pp, Willan Publishing, UKP16.99 In 1993 in this paper, Duncan Campbell reported what he saw as a significant event in the war on drugs. During a workshop on prevention held as part of a drugs conference run by the Association of Chief Police Officers in West Yorkshire, a group of senior drugs squad leaders concluded that what we were doing - seizing drugs, busting dealers, confiscating assets - was not working. [continues 1376 words]
I am responding to the recent letter by Toby Hinton who writes from his perspective of 13 years as a police officer in Vancouver's downtown eastside that legalizing marijuana will not solve drug problems". It seems that his experience of the worst aspects of the situation has done little to provide him with any real insight into the situation. He states, for example, that one of the worst drug he deals with is alcohol, another one being nicotine. I have no doubt that those whose arguments he seeks to rebut would certainly agree on that point. However, Hinton fails to recognize that the vast majority of people who use alcohol (as opposed to abuse) do so without ill effect. [continues 464 words]
The government could afford to take the political risk of legalising cannabis as a first step to breaking the link between drugs and terrorism, Mo Mowlam said yesterday. Speaking at a London conference on the Colombia drug problem, Ms Mowlam, who as Cabinet Office minister was responsible for drugs policy between 1999 and 2001, dismissed the government's reclassification of cannabis, announced earlier this summer, as unworkable. "[It is] the young person's drug of choice. It's ridiculous that it's illegal. It's making young people break the law, and not helping anybody. You can buy it, smoke it, but not sell it. It doesn't make sense." [continues 182 words]
