When most people think about drugs as an issue in politics, the habits of individual politicians are probably at the front of their minds. My own attempt as Conservative leader to frame a “zero tolerance” policy collapsed when more than a third of my shadow cabinet admitted to once taking drugs themselves. David Cameron was bedevilled for a while with such questions about his past.
More recently, as public attitudes have changed, popular leaders have been able to breeze through the issue with a quick confession, from Boris Johnson’s admission that he tried cocaine at university — but “it achieved no pharmacological, psychotropical or any other effect on me whatsoever” — to Barack Obama’s “I inhaled: that was the point”.
Recreational drug use is no
