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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Drug experiments 'are a part of growing up
Cambridge Evening News
Monday 12 Feb 2007 MP ANDREW Lansley has defended his party leader's schoolboy experiments with drugs as "part of growing up" - but warned it should not serve as an excuse for young people today (Monday, 12 February) to follow suit. Conservative Party leader David Cameron has refused to deny he smoked cannabis at the age of 15 while a student at Eton. Mr Lansley, MP for South Cambridgeshire and shadow health spokesman, right, said: "I've known him since 1989 by which time he was working for a living and I think from my personal experience he had put youthful excesses behind him. "It was a very long time ago. I think we should say that's what he did when he was young, and I dare say he regrets it." The revelation about Mr Cameron, left, is the latest in a string of politicians including Bill Clinton, Mo Mowlam, Yvette Cooper and Lord Norman Lamont - who have admitted taking drugs while students. Mr Lansley said he hoped this would not send out the wrong message. He said: "The main thing for young people to understand is that not everybody took drugs when they were younger, a lot of people did not. Quite a lot of people who do, find it becomes addictive and progress to harder drugs." However, he emphasised he realised teenagers often experiment, and said: "We should not be judgmental about people who are young." He added: "Maybe peer pressure was strong at Eton. One of the things we learn at school is how to resist peer pressure and it's part of growing up." Mr Lansley said he did not believe the revelations would harm the career of Mr Cameron, who is the first party leader to have ever confessed to breaking the law. Attitudes to the drug are known to have changed since Mr Cameron was at Eton , with only 12 per cent of Britons believing cannabis should be legalised in the 1980s, compared to 41 per cent today (Monday, 12 February). Last year former Home Secretary Charles Clarke decided not to reverse a decision taken in 2004 to downgrade cannabis to a class C drug, but conceded it could cause serious mental illness. Mr Cameron will seek to put questions about his past experience of drugs behind him today (Monday, 12 February) as he sets off for a two-day visit to Sweden. He received the backing of a string of shadow cabinet colleagues who queued up to insist that the revelation had no bearing on his suitability as a prospective prime minister. And rival parties seemed reluctant to attack him for his apparent youthful indiscretion. Home Secretary John Reid played down the significance of the story, describing it as "one of those 'so what?' moments." http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/
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