Ugly rumours, purple loons, but drugs? Never

Election Countdown

He wore purple loons and cowboy boots - he even sang in a band called Ugly Rumours - but unlike his wishy-washy counterpart in America, Tony Blair was never tempted to try drugs.

During his campaign to become President, Bill Clinton admitted to taking a puff of wacky baccy, an admission that became even wackier when he claimed that he didn't inhale.

But there were no such half- measures for Mr Blair. Yesterday, he categorically stated that, despite leading a somewhat Bohemian existence as an undergraduate at Oxford, he had never tried drugs. During questioning at a school in Aberdeen where he announced Labour's proposals for a "drug tsar", a high- powered official with responsibility for co-ordinating the fight against Britain's growing drug problem, he answered the question many had secretly been asking: Was there anyone during the early Seventies who had said no to blow?

Yes there was - Mr Blair. Asked whether he personally had taken drugs, he replied firmly: "No," and said he had warned his own children about the risks of taking them.

The Labour leader was firm on establishing his anti-drug credentials before launching into his new proposals based on the American post of director of the office of national drug policy, or drug tsar for short, a man in charge of an $18bn (pounds 11bn) war chest. "I believe we need to appoint a figurehead in the battle against drugs - someone who will both lead the fight against drugs and help educate young people not to take them," he said after meeting pupils in an anti-drugs class at the Dyce Academy.

"The appointment of such a figure would signal the determination of the Government that it was not prepared to tolerate the waste of young lives. The drug tsar will have clout and direct access to Government," he said. "This appointment will be a clear manifesto commitment. It will be a valuable added weapon against one of the great evils of our time."

Despite referring to the office as an American innovation, officials representing the American drug tsar, General Barry McCaffrey, said they had not co-ordinated with Mr Blair's team. Don Maple, General McCaffrey's spokesman, said: "They haven't contacted us as far as I'm aware ... but I wish you luck." Mr Maple did not wish to gauge the impact the establishment of a drug tsar could have in the UK, but since its creation in America in 1988, the number of drug abusers had fallen from 24m to 12m, he said.

Mr Blair's initiative coincided with a call from a committee of the Church of Scotland for the legalisation of cannabis to be considered. The Board of Social Responsibility said yesterday that it wants a Royal Commission to be set up to look at legalisation.

Its convener, the Rev Bill Wallace, said: "We are, in effect, saying look before you ever consider leaping into the unknown. The experience of legalising alcohol and tobacco would indicate such a change would be well nigh irreversible."

The call came following a survey of more than 2,500 pupils in Scottish secondary schools which found that half had experimented with drugs and a quarter were still using them.

Leading article, page 19