RELAX: WE'RE NOT HUNG UP ON DRUGS

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.

There are two reasons for the confidence with which Conservative
Central Office has brushed aside all questions about Cameron's
punishment as an Eton 16-year-old over the discovery of cannabis in
rooms to which he and his friends had access.

The first is that Cameron's refusal to be drawn on any drugs
questions - established during the heat of the leadership campaign
after it came up in a public interview with The Observer's Andrew
Rawnsley - had, quite simply, worked. Indeed, his strategy team
remains convinced that his calm but firm refusal to say anything
about drugs use when later challenged on BBC's Question Time - and
the burst of applause he got from the audience for doing so - was a
turning-point in his winning the Tory crown.

But times, too, have changed. Gone are the days when a leader's brush
with any kind of drug risked serious, even fatal, career damage. In
Britain, at least, few senior politicians apart from Cameron - and,
significantly, Tony Blair - still take refuge in a simple 'no comment'.

A few others clearly remain torn between transparency and a sense of
embarrassment, and respond with their own acrobatic equivalents of
Bill Clinton's famous admission that, though he had smoked cannabis
at Oxford, he 'didn't inhale'.

Even in America, there have been recent signs of quite dramatic
change. A spokesman for young Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who
yesterday formally threw his hat into the ring as a presidential
candidate, recently defended Obama's admission in a memoir that he
had taken cocaine. 'I believe what this country is looking for is
someone who is open, honest and candid' about such issues, the
spokesman said - and most US pundits seem inclined to agree.

A turning point on this side of Atlantic came in 2000, during one of
the periodic bouts of internal bloodletting among the pre-Cameron
Conservatives. Ann Widdecombe, then a shadow minister, had just
unveiled plans for a hard-line move on drugs, and the party's
reformist tendency responded with an orchestrated series of
admissions by top Tories that they had in fact dabbled in drugs.

In all, seven members of then-leader William Hague's shadow cabinet
came clean. They ranged from current party chairman Francis Maude to
senior policy adviser Oliver Letwin, who memorably declared that he
had smoked pot by accident. 'At Cambridge, I was a very pretentious
student,' he said. 'I grew a beard and took up a pipe. On one
occasion some friends put some dope in a pipe I was smoking. It had
absolutely no effect on me at all. I don't inhale pipes.'

Another current top Tory, the shadow education spokesman David
Willetts, was quoted as saying: 'I had two puffs. I didn't like it
and I have never had any experience of drugs since then.'

The closest thing to a Labour come-clean moment followed speculation
- - ignored by the Prime Minister - in a 2004 biography of Blair that
he was likely to have had at least a puff or two of drugs while at
Oxford. Only three prominent Labour figures - the late Mo Mowlam,
health minister Caroline Flint and housing minister Yvette Cooper -
had previously admitted to having used drugs. Later, Charles Clarke
admitted to smoking pot 'once.' Chancellor Gordon Brown said, through
a spokesman, that he had 'never touched illegal substances'.

Also denying drug use were John Reid, Peter Hain, David Blunkett and
Jack Straw - despite Straw's having had to deal with the issues when
his son Will unwittingly bought drugs from an undercover newspaper reporter.

One comment during the storm over drugs must surely now haunt its
author - Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who was
forced out of office last year over a drink problem. Urging both
Blair and then Tory leader Michael Howard to answer the drugs
question, he said: 'I have never taken drugs. I think it is important
that other party leaders come clear on an issue of such huge national
importance.'

Cameron's aides were last night insisting that he was 'relaxed' about
today's revelation of his teenage experience - one common to
millions. They also rejected any suggestion that a continuing refusal
to comment on whether he might have taken drugs at Oxford meant he
might have something further to hide.

The aides said the Tory leader's broader view on the use and abuse of
drugs remained unchanged. Since standing for the leadership, he has
repeatedly stressed the need to improve and expand education to bring
home the dangers of drug abuse. On classification of individual drugs
he has argued for an 'evidence-based' policy. He was also a member of
the Commons home affairs select committee that issued a 2002 report
recommending a major review of drugs classification.

Just last month, Cameron said he would be 'relaxed' about legalising
cannabis for medicinal use if reliable evidence showed it helped. He
is equally relaxed, it seems, about what the public now know about
his schooldays.

Did they inhale?

Winston Churchill

From 1940 used the barbiturate, quinalbarbitone. After his stroke in
1953 he was given amphetamine.

Anthony Eden

Private papers disclosed that at the height of the Suez crisis in
1956, Eden was on drinamyl, better known as 'purple hearts.'

Bill Clinton

In March 1992 admitted drug use while a student at Oxford: 'When I
was in England, I experimented with marijuana. I didn't inhale and I
never tried it again.'

Barack Obama

His 1995 memoir, Dreams From my Father, detailed his drug and alcohol
use in his high school and college years. He admitted using
'pot...and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.'

Mo Mowlam

In 2000 admitted she smoked cannabis as a student at Durham. She said
'Unlike President Clinton I did inhale.'

Boris Johnson

Responding to an Oxford contemporary who said Johnson had never taken
drugs, the Tory MP for Henley said: 'This is an outrageous slur...of
course I've taken drugs.'