Pubdate:  Wed, 17 Sep 1997

French minister admits to smoking marijuana

 Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd.  All rights reserved.

 PARIS, Sept 17 (Reuter)  France's Environment Minister Dominique
Voynet, in an admission sure to cause an outcry among conservatives,
has said she smoked marijuana and thinks cannabis should be
legalised. "Yes," Voynet told the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo when
an interviewer asked whether she had smoked joints. When asked if she
still smoked them, she replied with the French expletive "merde" to
brush off further questions. In the interview published on Wednesday,
Voynet said that as a politician and a trained medical doctor, she
favoured legalising cannabis. While heroin addiction often affects
people predisposed to drug addiction, "the occasional consumption of
cannabis has no effect on health and social relations," she said. "I
am more worried by the number of French people who need sleeping
pills than by the number of people who confess to having smoked a
joint," she said. The head of the French Greens, Voynet reluctantly
joined the Socialistled cabinet after a "pinkredgreen" coalition
ousted the conservatives from power in June's parliamentary
elections. The previous cabinet campaigned strongly against drugs,
often accusing the Netherlands of failing to crack down on the
illicit trade in cannabis and becoming a major source of supply for
French users.