Pubdate: Tue, 11 Oct 2005
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Marina Hyde

David Cameron's refusal to answer the drug question may reap him the
same benefits as Tony Blair

Has he taken drugs? No idea. But do you know where I could get some as
a matter of urgency? So tedious are the attempts to needle David
Cameron into coughing up to former substance use that I yearn to be
heavily medicated each time the question arises, and, in order to
speed the demise of this latest contribution to the alleged debate on
narcotics, feel duty bound to remind inquisitors that God's own
messenger, George Bush, was exposed earlier this year as a former
marijuana user, and was still in a job last time anyone dared look.

Just prior to his accession to the presidency, a former aide of his
father's elicited Dubya's admission on a tape, yet when he made its
contents known, barely an eyelid was batted. This is because - as
Cameron and everyone else flogging this non-story is doubtless aware -
there are two types of marijuana. There is the type used by convicted
felons, languishing in Texas jails for 25 years under the three
strikes rule after being caught with a few dollars' worth of it in
their sock. And there is the youthful experiment type. Similarly, when
Tony Blair held his Cool Britannia party and giggled matily with Noel
Gallagher about the divergent means they had used to stay awake on the
night of Labour's 1997 election victory, you had to remember that the
reason he could welcome a self-confessed coke-lover to No 10 was that
Noel used a whole other kind of drugs to the ones the PM had declared
one of his fatuous wars on.

For the sake of adult argument, we'll assume that if David Cameron
hadn't tried some sort of recreational drug in his time, he'd be
falling over himself to say so at this particular juncture. His only
challenge, in the bewildering new moral universe we have inhabited
since the Kate Moss palaver, is implying which of the above types of
marijuana or anything else he took. One suspects it was the youthful
experiment sort, but perhaps it is the fear that former friends'
recollections may vary that causes him to be so determinedly coy on
the matter. Still, with any luck, Cameron's Oxford will be much like
the 60s - if you can remember it, dude, you totally weren't there! -
and his coquettish refusal to commit to an answer will reap him the
same benefits as it has Tony Blair.

I would, however, be outraged if either man became the face of
Burberry.

If the past few weeks have taught us anything, it is that while the
use of recreational drugs at some point in one's life would not disbar
one from becoming the leader of the free world, or a future prime
minister, or a senior newspaper journalist, it would be beyond
unseemly to allow such fallen creatures to advertise plaid-lined macs.
In fact, so addicted have some newspaper editors become to stories
about drugs that the sheer weight of them appears to have caused some
kind of tear in the celebrity-politics continuum.

Thus it is that Met chief Sir Ian Blair chose to break his long and
faintly awkward silence following disturbing revelations about the
shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes with a TV
interview in which he attempted to get heavy over a model blowing a
few lines off the back of a CD case. In light of this, it somehow
seems perfectly normal that the lone voices of sanity at present are
Lord Ashcroft and Robbie Williams. The former Tory party treasurer
used a vanity-published memoir of his battle with the Times to reveal
that three of that newspaper's journalists had snorted cocaine in
front of him at a party conference, while the Angels singer announced
in exasperation in a press conference on Friday that he had taken
drugs with some of the very newspaper hacks currently sticking it to
Kate Moss.

Yet on it goes. We seem set to endure further pointless questioning of
David Cameron on this business until either he loses his rag and
headbutts an interviewer, or the aforementioned tear causes public
life finally to collapse in on itself with a story that David
Blunkett's dog has been dealing crack in Annabel's.

If the pretence that this is a crucial line of inquiry is to be
maintained, perhaps a similar effort should be expended determining
which other potentially life-wrecking criminal offences may have been
committed by Cameron and gone undetected. Has he ever conversed on his
mobile telephone while driving? Has he broken the speed limit? Has he
paid a plumber in cash? Has he run with scissors? Enquiring minds want
to know. In the meantime, we need hardly ask where next for whichever
of his squeaky-clean leadership rivals fail to land the job. There's a
vacancy to front the Chanel campaign, and they'd all be perfect.
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MAP posted-by: Matt Elrod