UK News 09-10-2000 Tories On Cannabis who: Ann Widdecombe what: Forced to backtrack on cannabis policy where: LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "Seven senior Tories yesterday savaged Ann Widdecombe`s leadership hopes by admitting they have smoked cannabis," reports The Mirror today. "All seven are on the party`s more liberal wing and are likely to back Michael Portillo in a post-election leadership contest against Miss Widdecombe." Shadow Home Secretary Widdecombe, who caused consternation at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth last week by promising on-the-spot fines for cannabis users, was forced to backtrack yesterday after Francis Maude, Archie Norman, Bernard Jenkin, Lord Strathclyde, Oliver Letwin, David Willetts and Peter Ainsworth all confessed in the Mail on Sunday to having used the drug. "Like many of my generation it was quite hard to go through Cambridge in the Seventies without doing it a few times," said Mr Maude. "I don`t regret having done it. You expect human beings to experiment. If you don`t, you haven`t been young." Yesterday, Miss Widdecombe said that the fixed penalty would be merely an option for police. "The police could take you to court, as they can now, or they could fine you, as they cannot now," she said. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has called for the use of cannabis to be decriminalised, says The Telegraph. "He told Jonathan Dimbleby on London Weekend Television that he did not regard people who smoked the drug as `criminals`," and in his opinion the issue should be "considered by a royal commission". [... more]

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