CAMERON ADMITS: I USED DOPE AT ETON

Future Tory Leader 'Gated' Over Drugs . It Was a Wake-Up Call, Friends Told

David Cameron was punished at Eton after admitting smoking cannabis,
it was revealed last night.

The Conservative leader, who has repeatedly refused to comment
publicly on whether he has taken drugs, is also understood to have
continued occasionally to smoke the drug while he was a university
student at Oxford.

A senior Tory party official told the The Observer that the initial
incident happened in 1982, when Cameron was a 15-year-old student.

The school launched an investigation after receiving reports of some
boys buying drugs in the nearby town, according to the official.
During the inquiry, Cameron and a number of other pupils admitted smoking pot.

Several of the other boys were additionally found to be selling drugs
and were asked to leave the school, but Cameron was 'gated' -
deprived of all privileges and barred from leaving the premises or
being visited by friends or family. His punishment lasted for about a week.

An Eton contemporary said it had been a particularly humiliating
punishment for the future Opposition leader because it came shortly
before Eton's annual 'Fourth of June' gala day, when the college is
thrown open to pupils' parents, relatives and friends who enjoy
exhibitions, speeches, sports events and the traditional 'Procession of Boats'.

'Cameron was gated just beforehand, so his parents, who had been
looking forward to spending the day with their son, had to take him
away and apologise to their friends,' the fellow student said. 'It
was all painfully embarrassing. But after that he pulled himself
together and became an exemplary pupil.'

Last night, a Tory party spokesman said that Cameron was standing by
his refusal to be drawn on questions regarding past drug use - a
position he adopted during his campaign for the party leadership in 2005.

'David felt, and still 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,' the spokesman said.

But a close friend said Cameron had privately acknowledged his drug
use and described the incident at Eton as a 'wake-up' call that
spurred him gradually to focus on long-term goals and to 'take life
more seriously'.

The issue of whether Cameron used drugs was first raised in a public
interview by The Observer's chief political commentator, Andrew
Rawnsley, early in the party leadership race.

It led to particularly frantic media speculation over whether he
might have used Class A drugs while at Oxford and briefly threatened
to derail his bid for the top job. In the interview, at an
Observer-sponsored event during the Conservative party conference,
Rawnsley asked an apparently surprised Cameron whether he had ever
taken drugs in his younger days.

Cameron replied: 'I had a normal university experience.'

When Rawnsley continued to press him on the issue, Cameron added:
'There were things I did as a student that I don't think I should
talk about now that I am a politician.'

Informed last night that Cameron had got into trouble over cannabis
as a teenager, spokesmen for Downing Street, Labour and the Liberal
Democrats all declined comment.

While at Eton, Cameron was a pupil under housemaster John Faulkner.
The Tory party leader once admitted: 'I had a few brushes with
authority.' But he gained 10 good grades at O-level - achieving four
grade As, five Bs and a C - and also managed grade As in A-level
history, history of art and economics.

One senior master reportedly said: 'He was a very well-behaved and
decent boy. People here remember him as a nice, bright, pretty normal
schoolboy.'

There was no comment from Cameron's parents' home in Newbury,
Berkshire, yesterday. A woman, apparently his sister, answered the
phone and said: 'I have nothing to say.'