Dave Cameron's Conservative Camberwell Carrot

I have no problem with Dopey Dave Cameron smoking pot at Eton and Oxford. I also have no problem with someone who has had youthful and not so youthful soft drug experiences becoming Prime Minister. It never did President Clinton any harm, inhaler or non-inhaler as which ever the case may be.

Essay Crisis, Lectures and Angst are enough to drive even the most respectable of students, either to the bar, or the nearest drug dealer with purple hair. Or both, if you studied at Anglia University in the nineties.

But something of the way, Cameron treats this important issue rankles me. His passing off of his own drug experiences needs closer examination, beyond the Westminster world. Cameron admits he was still doing Cannabis at university. You know your own mind at this age, and you know the reason you do it, is to get off your face. There is nothing terribly wrong with occasional excess. Does Cameron think the british public is silly enough to think that he did drugs for any other reason than pleasure. I doubt he took a joint and started writing down the effects, ala Aldous Huxley. Come on Dave, pull the other one.

Its fun to live the "Withnail & I" existence once in your life, even though Cameron probably soathed his throat with Champagne afterwards, rather than Sainsburys Blue Label Lager.

However, if the rumours doing the rounds, prove to be true, that it might have "snowed" for the future leader in the eighties, this is of course much more serious. Everybody knows that Class A Drugs are responsible for a lot of inner city crime, and massive social problems. Doing Class A Drugs when you were an aspiring politician is harder to shrug off, than sitting in a garage, listening to the Doors, with a spliff. Considering the current gun problems in London, Cameron's position would be untenable, if it emerges he was involved with the yuppie drugs scene.

Imagine Thatcher injecting heroin, or John Major dropping LSD, and you get the picture. This might not be total fantasy, considering that Major bonked Edwina Currie. But the Tories could not accept a leader who had snorted Cocaine, could they?

I think what Cameron is saying when he uses the word "experimentation" is that its okay for his ilk, the wealthy young to indulge in drugs, because if it gets too much, Mummy and Daddy can bale them out. They will be removed from Oxford or Eton and placed in Rehab. After all, a word in the correct ear, will always get them back in. The rich have always taken this view, just look at the amount of aristocratic druggies that have filled up private clinics. The Blandfords & The Palmer-Tompkinson's of this world, you know the score.

For Cameron to publicly endorse this attitude has been his biggest mistake. It is just so patronising. Tell this to the mothers and fathers in our inner cities who watch their young turn from Cannabis to Ecstasy & Coke, and then onto Crack. They then need guns to help them get their fix. There is no way on earth, that these type of poorer parents can help "sort out" their children's experimentation is there?

At the end of the day, Cannabis is as harmful as Beer and I am not totally convinced that it is a gateway drug. But Call me Dave Cameron should watch what he says about "experimentation" - he could soon find himself hoisted by his own petard. The parents of Middle England, might well start to warm to a safe dour family Scotsman, from a religious background, rather than someone who is light-hearted, and less than candid on the critical issue of drugs.