UK: The End Of Denial ... But Did They Inhale?

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Greg Hurst, Political Correspondent

The Times

Friday 23 Jan 2004

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FOR years their only safe bet seemed to deny ever having smoked it at all.
Yet as children of the 1960s entered public life, the lines of defence used
by politicians retrenched.

Bill Clinton told The New York Times in 1992: 'I experimented with
marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale.'Not to
inhale rapidly entered the political lexicon as an example of a prominent
figure seeking to be honest while using any means, however weasel-like, to
mitigate the damage.

David Prior, at the time a Tory MP, in 1998 became one of the first
Conservatives to admit to having smoked cannabis, saying he found it relaxing.

Mo Mowlam was asked the inevitable question after taking responsibility for
the Government's anti-drugs campaign. She said: 'I tried marijuana, didn't
like it and unlike President Clinton did inhale.

This was followed by a handful of similar admissions from MPs. But later
that year Ann Widdecombe, misreading utterly the changing liberal wind,
announced plans for automatic fines of UKP100 for cannabis possession.
Within days they had been shot to pieces by modernising Conservatives.

Oliver Letwin, David Willetts, Lord Strathclyde, Bernard Jenkin, Francis
Maude, Peter Ainsworth and Archie Norman admitted to having smoked cannabis.

Days later Tim Yeo shattered the final bridgehead when he told The Times:
'I enjoyed it. It can be a much pleasanter experience than having too much
to drink.

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