DRUG RUMOURS HAUNT BUSH PRESIDENCY BID

CAMPAIGNERS for George W Bush, the leading Republican in the US
presidential race, have accused rivals of spreading malicious rumours that
the Texas governor was once a user of marijuana and cocaine.

Campaign workers for Bush's Republican opponents, Steve Forbes and Lamar
Alexander, are said to have raised the drug question in an effort to slow
the momentum of Mr Bush's campaign. Both camps deny it.

However, Brian Kennedy, Mr Alexander's campaign director, warned that Mr
Bush would continue to face the speculation about drugs until he spoke out.

"This sort of talk is out there, and it's encouraged when he admits to
having had problems with drink but refuses to answer questions on drugs.
Until such time as he gives a full answer, the Governor can expect that it
will be an issue in the campaign."

At the same time, lawyers acting for Mr Bush's campaign committee are
trying to prevent the publishers of Internet websites from displaying
similar, unproven allegations that he dabbled in drugs in his youth.

The attempt by Mr Bush's team to quash damaging rumours comes as he
prepares to leave the relative safety of Texas to try out his campaign
nationally. He will be the last of 10 would-be Republican candidates to
visit Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first contests for the presidential
nomination will be held.

Mr Bush has held on to a clear lead over his rivals by avoiding controversy
and sticking to his own back-yard. He and his advisers are bracing
themselves for fiercer scrutiny once he launches himself on to the national
stage. "It will be open season," one ally admitted.

Despite the threat of smear-campaigns, Mr Bush has so far stuck to his
strategy of refusing to answer questions about what he admits were
"mistakes" when he was a younger man.

Rumours of wild-living before Mr Bush met and married his wife, Laura, have
been fuelled by his admission of heavy drinking before he renounced alcohol
at the age of 40, and the lack of denials when asked specific questions
about drugs.

Karen Hughes, spokeswoman for Mr Bush, said the rumours reflected the "sad
state of American politics".

She said: "Governor Bush has admitted that he was not perfect, that he made
mistakes more than 20 years ago. He is not willing to itemise them because
he does not want his own daughters or any other young people in America to
do something because he did it."

Mr Bush's official line, as he put it in one interview, is: "What I did as
a youth is irrelevant to this campaign. What is relevant is, have you grown
up, and I have." But the result is a widespread belief, despite the lack of
any evidence, that there is, as one Democrat strategist put it, "something
waiting in the woodwork".

The "character issue" is certain to dominate the run-up to the 2000
elections following the stream of revelations about Bill Clinton's
philandering private life.

And two leading American broadsheet newspapers have this month run lengthy
investigations into Mr Bush's past as the subject has come to the fore.

After interviewing dozens of past friends and acquaintances, the
conservative Wall Street Journal concluded that there was not a "shred of
proof" to the cocaine rumours, which it put down to a "culture of gossip".
The New York Times investigated Mr Bush's business dealings at even
greater length, but found little to criticise.

Allegations of drug use by Mr Bush have been aired or hinted at on dozens
of television shows and in the pages of more than a score of newspapers
and magazines.

The front-page Wall Street Journal report, under the headline "Empty
Chatter", included what it calls a "gossip-circuit favourite", that Mr Bush
bought cocaine on a Washington street corner and was high on the drug at
his father's inauguration as president. But two friends who were with him
at the ceremony categorically denied that he had been taking drugs.

The article also featured another suggestion that there exists a photograph
of the governor in his younger days dancing naked on top of a bar. But
although the paper quoted the former social chairman of Mr Bush's Yale
fraternity recalling that "Saturday night was party night" and "we drank a
lot of beer", the closest it came to establishing drug abuse was the
suggestion that the Texas governor once used to chew tobacco.

Other Bush contemporaries were quoted as saying that they did not believe
he had ever used drugs.

Republican strategists admit that it is unusual for there to be this degree
of scrutiny of a potential presidential candidate so long before the
election. The first primary contests will be held next February, and the
election itself is still 18 months away.

American newspapers largely brushed aside dark and persistent rumours about
the full extent of Bill Clinton's womanising in the run-up to the 1992
presidential election, but may attempt to be more tenacious this time. One
senior Republican said: "After eight years of Bill Clinton, character is an
issue that will be looked at closely. The way Bush is answering these
questions has fuelled the media's interest."