Nick Clegg: Drugs Should Be Treated As Medical, Not Criminal Matter

Nick Clegg Is Asked Whether He's Taken Drugs..
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Nick Clegg was quizzed about whether he had ever taken drugs - and his answer was, well, not entirely conclusive.

On his weekly phone-in on LBC radio, Clegg reiterated his view that the so-called 'war on drugs' was not being won.

When host Nick Ferrari pressed him to answer the caller's question about his own past, Clegg replied:

I'm simply not going to provide a running commentary about my past, I am not here to either present myself...I have certainly never, ever, ever, ever, ever, mixed of course my time in politics with, er, but I'm not going to get into, you know, what I did these things, right or wrong, in my deep dark past before I went into politics.

There we go.

Clegg previously said that governments and civil servants had tended to "stick their heads in the sand" and claim they were winning the war on drugs.

"We are not, quite frankly", he said.

Clegg said in some cases drug abuse should be treated as a health, not a criminal matter.

But he said he did not see legalisation as a silver bullet, adding that new Lib Dem Home Office minister Norman Baker had been asked to look at other countries' methods of dealing with the problem.