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UK: So what else have you got to hide, Dave?
Oonagh Blackman Daily Record
Monday 12 Feb 2007 TORY leader David Cameron faces damaging questions about his honesty after it was revealed he DID smoke cannabis at school. Labour said that the revelations about Cameron's secret drugs past raised "serious issues" about his integrity. One party insider said last night: "Nobody cares what drugs Cameron took or how recently he stopped taking them. The question is why isn't he just upfront and honest with the British people about it. "What has he got to hide?" Cameron constantly ducked questions about drug taking as he fought the Tory leadership contest in2005. But a new book claims he narrowly avoided being expelled from Eton, aged 15, when he was involved in the school's worst-ever drugs scandal. Cameron, now 40, was caught when another pupil named him as a drug user in 1982, after police carried out a drugs purge at the posh school. Yesterday, he still refused to directly discuss his drug taking. Speaking outside his farmhouse in Oxfordshire, Cameron said: "Like many people, I did things when I was young that I should not have done and that I regret. "I'm not issuing a denial, what I am saying is that I think it's an important principle that politicians are entitled to a private past." The book alleges Eton authorities called police after suspicions that a number of pupils had been involved with the drug. Seven pupils were eventually expelled. Cameron confessed to smoking cannabis after he was named by another pupil and hauled in front of head teacher Eric Anderson - who also taught Tony Blair at Fettes Because he had only smoked the illegal substance and not traded it, he escaped expulsion, the book claims. Instead he was "gated" - confined to school grounds - for two weeks, fined and ordered to copy out hundreds of lines of Latin verse. There have been persistent rumours that Cameron may have taken cocaine when he was a PR executive at CarltonTV. And the new biography, Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, also refers to his "infrequent and moderate consumption of cannabis during his three years at Oxford". At Oxford University in 1987, Cameron was a member of the elite, champagne-quaffing Bullingdon Club dining society. The riotous club was notorious for trashing restaurants after major drinking binges and paying off waitresses with wads of cash. Quizzed about the drug claims yesterday, Cameron's close friend, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, said: "The public don't care." Osborne, once pictured with his arm around a woman described as a "cocaine-snorting hooker", said: "It's not been denied by David but he's also said we are not in the business of saying politicians can't have a private life before they come into politics." Former Tory Minister Norman Tebbit called onhim to come clean. He said: "My advice to him now would be, get it out of the way, get it over with and it will be a seven-day wonder. If you don't, people will keep turning up with another expose." Labour ministers avoided going on the attack publicly in a sign that attitudes to cannabis are now far more liberal in Britain. The drug has been downgraded from Class B to C. Home Secretary John Reid said: "I think this is one of those 'so what' moments." http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/
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