CRIMEBUSTERS GO TO POT IN A HAZE OF CANNABIS SMOKE

The tragic consequences of what can happen when someone smoked
cannabis 25 years ago were there for all to see in the Commons
yesterday. I refer, of course, to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.
She had come to tell us about the Government's crime reduction
strategy. I regret to report that she was forgetful, confused and,
once or twice, very close to having a fit of the giggles. Perhaps she
no longer feels the need to hide the effects. Who knows? Clearly she
has an addictive personality.

Yesterday morning, having told one TV station about drug-fuelled
behaviour in the 1980s, she couldn't wait to tell another. Indeed,
drug experts believe that her compulsion to tell her story was only
thwarted by the fact that she ran out of TV stations.

Sadly, her behaviour had already had the unfortunate effect of
encouraging her peers to indulge in soul-baring.

We had all thought that Tony McNulty, a Home Office minister, was her
partner in crime-stopping. Now we know that he was a partner in crime
as well. He admitted yesterday morning (so early in the day!) that he
had smoked cannabis "once or twice". Vernon Coaker, another Home
Office minister whose name has always set off alarm bells, has also
admitted he went to pot years ago.

They were there on the front bench, looking glazed and vacant as Ms
Smith explained why everything is wonderful. "Over the past ten years,
we have revolutionised the crime-fighting landscape," she noted. Can
you revolutionise a landscape? Does Che know? Or was that the drugs
talking from all those years ago?

She was hazy on details. Indeed, it was impossible to tell, from
listening to her, what was going on. "As today's crime statistics
show, we are holding the improvements to the falls in crime," she
announced. What did it mean? Or did it mean nothing?

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, was too busy abseiling to
smoke cannabis 25 years ago. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence, then,
that he painted a very different picture. Crime was not going down, he
said, and the public knew it. "All the fiddled figures in the world
will not change their minds," he sneered. "This morning on
television," he noted, prompting immediate flashbacks, "you said that
drug crime is down. I just do not know where that idea is from." I
think everyone watching had the same thought. Indeed, by then,
Westminster had become slightly drug-crazed. A colleague arrived in
the press gallery, glanced at Ms Smith and noted: "She hasn't brought
her bong." Certainly Ms Smith had managed to reclassify herself,
though we still don't know about cannabis itself.

Ms Smith insisted that crime was going down. She said that the chances
of becoming a victim of crime were at "historically low levels". But
Mr Davis insisted that crime was skyrocketing: violent crime had
doubled, knife crime had doubled, and gun crime had doubled. Can crime
be both this good (Smith) and this bad (Davis) at the same time? We
were seeing double. I'm not sure what happened in the chamber but,
gradually, a party atmosphere seemed to creep in. A Tory MP invited Ms
Smith to Kettering. "We could spend the night together," he noted to
great excitement, "with the local constabulary chasing the 260
persistent prolific offenders in Northamptonshire!"

Ms Smith responded by calling him her "honourable friend" but then
quickly took it back. "We're not friends yet," she cried. "But we
might be after our night out in Kettering!" So, Kettering, watch out:
for, as we know all too well after yesterday, politicians love a party.