>From: "Peter McWilliams" <peter@mcwilliams.com>
>Subject: Yet another hypocrite
>Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 14:04:31 -0800
>X-Mozilla-Status: 8001
>X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jan 2000
>Source: New York Times (NY)
>Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
>Contact: letters@nytimes.com
>Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
>Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
>
>BRITAIN'S ANTI-DRUG CHIEF MOWLAM SMOKED CANNABIS
>
>LONDON (Reuters) - British cabinet minister Mo Mowlam, recently appointed to
>head the Labor government's anti-drug campaign, admitted Sunday she had
>smoked marijuana as a student.
>
>``I tried marijuana, I didn't like it particularly, and unlike President
>Clinton I did inhale,'' Mowlam, 50, said after British newspapers reported
>she smoked the drug when studying in the United States in the early 1970s.
>The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said that a fellow student at Iowa State
>University, where Mowlam studied politics, had seen Mowlam with a cannabis
>cigarette in her hands at a party.
>
>In an interview with Sky Television, the former Secretary for Northern
>Ireland, said the incident would not compromise her new position as
>coordinator of the government's drug policy.
>
>``It happened in America, it was something many people experimented with,''
>she said. ``If I had bought it, sold it, used it frequently it might have
>done, but I didn't.'' Britain's Conservative party has seized upon Mowlam's
>admission, just as Republicans criticized President Clinton, who admitted to
>smoking, but not inhaling marijuana during his 1992 presidential campaign.
>As well as her anti-drug role, Cabinet Office Minister Mowlam's duties
>include ensuring that government policy is implemented. ``Anyone who takes
>responsibility for leading our policy against drugs should themselves be
>able to say with conviction and from personal conviction that one must just
>say no to drugs,'' said Andrew Lansley, Conservative Shadow Minister.
>
>Britain's government has taken a tough stance against drugs, but a report
>partly funded by the Home Office is expected to call for the
>decriminalization of cannabis and a shake-up of the country's drugs laws.
>Mowlam and her team will respond to the report by the Runciman Committee, a
>quasi-Royal Commission, when it releases its findings next month. At
>present, possession of cannabis can be punished by up to seven years in jail
>in Britain but long sentences are rarely imposed.
>
>The latest Home Office figures indicate that about 500 people were
>imprisoned in 1997 for possession of cannabis.
>
>A recent MORI poll found that 80 percent of Britons supported the relaxation
>of cannabis laws while only 17 percent believed that cannabis should remain
>illegal.
>
>
>================================================================
>
>This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to
>   the mailing list <LIST@mcwilliams.com>.
>To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <LIST-off@mcwilliams.com>