What are they smoking? Politicians have always dabbled in drugs

No one is surprised that MPs have partaken in a myriad of different substances, writes Sean O'Grady

Powder plot: traces of cocaine have been found throughout parliament (PA)

The revelation – if that’s the word – that traces of cocaine have been found throughout parliament and the government’s latest skirmish in the unending war on drugs, has naturally focused attention on the recreational habits of our rulers. The new “10-year strategy” against so-called county lines and drug abuse has the great advantage, from Boris Johnson’s point of view, of stretching far beyond any realistic expectation of his time in office. Indeed, he might not last another 10 weeks at this rate.

Having pretended to “get Brexit done” and failed, and pretended to “flatten the sombrero” of the pandemic, and failed, the prime minister now wants to pretend to win the war on drugs. He’s thinking about taking drug peddlers’ driving licences or passports away, that sort of thing, so serious does he think the problem: “Drugs are driving a lot of misery and we can fix it. They’re not going to make you happier. They’re not going to make you more successful. They’re not going to make you cooler. They’re bad news.”

Johnson declares that “the country is littered with victims of what’s happened”. Arguably, he too is a “victim”, because he has freely confessed to doing drugs in the past, albeit with some Johnsonian obfuscatory jokes attached and with a certain inconsistency; whether his experiences did him any harm is another question.