Johann Hari: Drugs: a Clause Four for the Tories?

All along, there has been a serious, silent drugs question hanging over the contest

If you reread Cameron's questions to the drugs experts from that 2002 investigation armed with the new knowledge that one of his close relatives is a heroin addict, his willingness to see beyond blind prohibitionist rhetoric seems both sadder and sharper.

Look, for example, at how Cameron reacted to Fulton Gillespie, a witness called before the committee, whose son Scott died just before his 34th birthday after buying adulterated heroin. Gillespie told him: "I can assure you there are very few things in life that concentrate the mind more than losing a child. So I had to think about this very, very firmly. Before this happened, I was one of those people who said: 'Build more prisons, throw away the key.'"

After his son's death, he tracked down his addict friends and found out how they were living. He discovered that prohibition doesn't stop people using drugs; it simply hands the industry to armed criminal gangs who were claiming hundreds of thousands of victims of their own - including Scott. "I think the stuff that killed my son was talcum powder," he said. "The reason I am now for legalisation is, how can we regulate supply if we are not in charge of the power station? We have to take control back from the criminals and place it back with us, the people. It is too dangerous to be left in the hands of criminals." Cameron paused and replied: "That is a very powerful argument."

As you watch Cameron questioning more and more witnesses like this, you can see him being slowly persuaded, against his politician's instincts. The journalist Nick Davies told him why the number of heroin addicts has increased two hundred-fold since it was criminalised in 1971: "It is like pyramid selling. The most common way for a heroin user to fund their own use is to sell it. You turn to your four closest friends [and get them hooked] and you inject the profit. Each of these three or four friends are then in the same position, and so it expands."

Cameron offered a halting answer: "Your analysis of what has happened since 1971 - I think many of us would share [that] it has been a disastrous policy." He later asked witnesses what the opinion polls say about support for legalisation.

Eventually, Cameron stopped just short of recommending it. But he proposed a drastic shift nonetheless: downgrading of ecstasy and cannabis, more extensive heroin prescription, the introduction of safe injecting houses for heroin junkies - and he even said legalisation will have to be considered in future if prohibition continues to fail.

As recently as a month ago, Cameron was sticking to these conclusions - and earned a full-page piece of praise in The Sun newspaper for it, a sign of how quickly the debate on drugs is shifting. But then came Bridesheadgate, and the back-pedalling began. Cameron has ditched his conclusions for a soft-focus, intellectually fuzzy piece of boilerplate rhetoric: "I am in favour of proper education in schools and proper treatment programmes that are not soft. Really tough treatment programmes, tougher than the ones that you get in prison."

But back on the select committee, he saw that these measures are far from enough. Mike Trace, then deputy drugs tsar, told him the evidence was "very thin" that teaching kids about drugs significantly reduces their chances of using it. Dr Colin Brewer told him that, while rehab can be excellent and should be much more widely available, even the best heroin rehab programmes in the world have a success rate of only 20 per cent. That means you will still have four out of every five heroin users for whom rehab will be useless. It's no use talking tough to them: a safe, regular, legal supply is what they need.

So is Cameron just squirming his way through the Tory leadership contest and planning a more radical drugs policy once he is in charge? Or is he about to be added to the long list of politicians who knows the "war on drugs" has been a lethal disaster - not least for his own relatives - but keeps ploughing billions into it for another generation because he is too afraid to tell the British people the truth?

j.hari@independent.co.uk