|
Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! Please  login or  register to post messages and view our members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, encrypted messages, file attachments, board customizations, and much more!
|
 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 6,079
|
 Nine cabinet ministers admit:' We smoked cannabis' [UK]
#7196736 - 07/19/07 08:44 AM (1 year, 2 months ago) |
|
|
SEVEN cabinet ministers admit:' We smoked cannabis'
July 19, 2007 - thisislondon.co.uk
Seven Cabinet ministers including the Home Secretary and Chancellor smoked cannabis as students, it emerged today.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith began an extraordinary day of confessions, saying: "I'm not proud about it. I did the wrong thing."
She was later joined by two of her junior ministers, Tony McNulty and Vernon Coaker, who also said they took the drug as students.
Then to the astonishment of colleagues, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, a devout Catholic, was next to admit she dabbled as an undergraduate.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton announced that he was another former cannabis user. With Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Housing Minister Yvette Cooper having come clean in the past, that added up to five members of the Cabinet now saying they broke the law in their youths.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it was a matter for individual ministers "to decide how to answer these questions".
Mr McNulty told BBC News 24: "At university I encountered it, I smoked it once or twice, and I don't think many people who were at university at the time didn't at least encounter it."
Their candid admissions could open the door to other senior politicians to speak more openly about their past. In previous years, Downing Street has strongly discouraged Cabinet ministers from answering questions about such things as drug abuse.
But the Daily Mail's sister paper, the Evening Standard, has learned that Ms Smith informed Gordon Brown before speaking out and was told it was up to her to decide how to handle the issue.
The Home Secretary is in charge of new moves to toughen the law on cannabis and reverse the 2004 declassification of it from a Class B drug to Class C - a step blamed for throwing the law into confusion and encouraging more open use of the drug.
Asked about her own history, Ms Smith, 44, said she regretted using the drug as an Oxford undergraduate. "I think it was wrong that I smoked it when I did. I share other people's concerns about the effect that cannabis has on young people and mental health problems.
"Actually, in some ways, I've learned my lesson and I've got a responsibility as Home Secretary now to make sure we put in place the laws, the support, the information to make sure we carry on bringing cannabis use down."
The minister said she had not touched the drug since leaving university.
And she denied her past made her unfit to be Home Secretary, saying people preferred politicians to have experience of real life.
"You know, on the whole I think people want human beings to do jobs like this," she said.
"I'm not proud about it. I did the wrong thing. But one of the things about being a politician is that sometimes you are criticised for not knowing what's going on.
"Well, I hope my experiences in my life have actually helped me to understand that people do want crime tackled ... I know that because of the people I have talked to and the life that I have lived and I think that makes me more serious about tackling it."
Her frankness is bound to put pressure on Conservative leader David Cameron to speak openly about his past drug use.
A biography of Mr Cameron disclosed that he was disciplined as a 15-year-old pupil at Eton for smoking cannabis. Police were called to the school and some other boys who sold the drug were expelled.
Mr Cameron has refused to discuss the event, arguing that politicians are entitled to "a private past" but says he never dabbled in drugs while in public life.
Speaking in February, he said: "When younger, lots of people do things that they shouldn't - I was one of them - and I regret those things but I think people should judge me now on the policies we have put forward.î Some critics have questioned whether he used drugs after leaving university but before becoming an MP.
Asked on GMTV if the Tory leader should be more open, Ms Smith said: "That's up to David Cameron."
Launching a new anti-crime strategy today, the minister said the review of drugs laws would aim to help victims "get your head together, get your life together".
She added: "The time is right, particularly as you get more dangerous and stronger forms of cannabis, to look at whether or not it is right to put that classification up to B. It's an important message and it says something about the damage that drugs can do to you."
Ms Smith said the Prime Minister - who has said he never touched drugs in his life - did not ask her if she had when he appointed her Home Secretary.
Mod edit 7/20/07: Two more members of the cabinet today said they smoked cannabis in their youth, bringing the number who admit to having taken the drug to nine.
The skills secretary, John Denham, and the deputy Labour leader, Harriet Harman, became the latest ministers to admit they had broken the law by smoking cannabis.
|
 OneMoreRobot3021
punky jewster
Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 55,964
Loc: new york shitty
Last seen: 16 minutes, 23 seconds
|
Re: SEVEN cabinet ministers admit:' We smoked cannabis' [UK] [Re: veggie]
#7196743 - 07/19/07 08:46 AM (1 year, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Well I guess we can count this as a baby-step.
"It was the wrong thing but I did it."
I would be a bit more impressed if the wording had been "It was the illegal thing but I did it." Because I doubt they think it was "wrong" they just have to say that.
--------------------
The Drug Policy Alliance  Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
"The psychedelic experience - it has a tremendous force to revivify the spirit, particularly because it is not an ideology. It is not something someone 'figured out.' It is an EXPERIENCE. And this is important to bear in mind." - McKenna.
"We're not mad, we're just doing what we want. You rigid thinkers can't recognize the healthy sanity of that." - Harlan Ellison, "Crackpots"
|
CUBErt
Connoisseur ofHallucination
Registered: 08/24/05
Posts: 1,067
Loc: Southern CA
Last seen: 3 days, 10 hours
|
Re: SEVEN cabinet ministers admit:' We smoked cannabis' [UK] [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
#7198909 - 07/19/07 05:43 PM (1 year, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah exactly ^
I'm waiting for more of these politicians who are well-established and have less at stake to come out and say things like that.
--------------------
-CUBErt
 
| |
|
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit 
Reply 
Quote 
