TORIES PRESS MOWLAM OVER HER 'DRUGS PAST'

MO MOWLAM, the Cabinet minister now responsible for the Government's
anti-drugs campaign, was last night under pressure from the Conservative
Party to come clean about whether she has ever smoked cannabis. The call was
made after a former colleague of Dr Mowlam's at Iowa State University in the
early 1970s disclosed to The Telegraph that she saw her handling drugs at a
party.

The claim will put pressure on the minister to answer questions about her
past - an embarrassment as she takes control of the Government's war against
drugs. Dr Mowlam has refused to deny allegations that she used illegal drugs
long before she assumed responsibility for managing the Government's
anti-drugs strategy. Last night the minister could not be contacted for
comment when the Conservatives demanded she reveal whether she had ever
smoked cannabis or used any illegal substance. Tories say the issue raises a
question mark over Dr Mowlam's credibility as the minister in charge of the
anti-drugs drive.

Andrew Lansley, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "Anyone who takes
responsibility for leading our policy against drugs should themselves be
able to say with conviction and from personal experience that one must just
say no to drugs." Dr Mowlam, 50, has admitted to having a "wild" time in her
university days. Claudia Beyer, a fellow postgraduate political student at
Iowa, said last night that she had once seen Dr Mowlam with a cannabis
cigarette in her hand at a party. However, she could no longer recall
whether Dr Mowlam smoked the joint or was merely passing it from one person
to another.

She said: "I didn't see it touch her lips. There was always time for
partying at that time, but Mo was very hard working.

She always had the work done first." Shortly after Dr Mowlam became Northern
Ireland Secretary in 1997 one newspaper claimed, in an apparently
well-researched profile, that she smoked cannabis while at Durham University
in the late 1960s. It said: "Life at Durham was liberated.

She smoked joints - and unlike President Clinton, Mo Mowlam inhaled." Dr
Mowlam has also dropped several heavy hints that she took illegal drugs
during a youth which was, by her own admission, at times outrageous. She
told one interviewer last year: "I suppose I was pretty wild. I was a child
of the 60s and did everything that went with that." She told an interviewer
from The Telegraph shortly before the last General Election about her days
as "a member of the rock'n'roll generation". But when asked whether she was
"one of the ones who smoke dope" she replied: "No, not in this article today
I'm not. No, no, no, not for Telegraph readers." Since being moved from
Northern Ireland and given the job of making sure that the Government's
tough anti-drugs policies are implemented, Dr Mowlam has been reluctant to
disclose whether she has ever taken any herself.

Dr Mowlam will be a crucial member of the team responding to a report by the
Runciman Committee which is expected to call for the decriminalisation of
possession of cannabis and a radical overhaul of Britain's other drugs laws.
The committee, headed by Lady Runciman, a former member of the Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs, is partly funded by the Home Office. The
Government is expected to adopt a cautious approach, however, as both Tony
Blair and Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, have taken a hardline stance -
even against soft drugs. From the day that Labour took office it has
promised to wage a "war against drugs" and is soon to introduce mandatory
drug testing for anyone arrested. Meanwhile, the Medical Research Council is
running a UKP 31 million study into the possible benefits of cannabis by
giving the drug to 2,000 patients with spinal injuries, multiple sclerosis
and incurable pain.