Liberal Democrat leadership hopeful Norman Lamb has said that more than half of current government ministers “almost certainly” tried illegal drugs in their younger years.

Speaking at an event organised by the Institute of Public Policy Research thinktank on Wednesday evening, the MP for North Norfolk described the UK’s current drugs laws as pathetic and a “monumental failure of public policy”.

“We have the crazy situation that, almost certainly, more than half of this government – half of the government ministers in a Conservative government – will have taken drugs in their younger years,” said Lamb, a former care minister under the coalition government.

“They put it down, in a very middle-class way, to youthful indiscretion, while other fellow citizens end up criminalised and their careers blighted as a result of taking a substance that is less dangerous than substances that are entirely legal.”

Lamb has previously called for the UK to legalise, regulate and tax the sale of cannabis, arguing that the UK should draw on examples from US states such as Colorado, which legalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use by over-21s in November 2012.

“We have tobacco, which kills about 100,000 people a year in our country,” said Lamb. “We have alcohol, which causes untold damage to families. We’ve lost our own former leader to an illness of alcohol addiction and yet we chose to criminalise young people for smoking a joint.”

Charles Kennedy, who was Lib Dem leader between 1999 and 2006, died in early June aged 55 after a long struggle with alcohol addiction.

“This is pathetic, outrageous public policy,” said Lamb. “At the same time as giving billions of pounds to international criminal networks. What an extraordinary position we’ve got ourselves into.”



A 2007 biography of the prime minister, Cameron: the Rise of the New Conservative, by James Hanning and Francis Elliott, tells how David Cameron was punished for smoking cannabis at Eton in 1982, weeks before his O-level exams.

According to the book, Cameron was fined, grounded for two weeks, and given the school’s traditional punishment of a “Georgic”: copying out hundreds of lines of Latin poetry. Cameron has never denied the story.

Lamb has spoken openly about his own family’s experience with his son’s mental ill-health and problems with drugs. “Look, as a father I’m actually rather hostile to drugs,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of people being affected by the influence and certainly not the addiction of a range of drugs, legal or illegal … But I don’t want my sons to be criminalised if they chose to do something like that.”

The Lib Dems have historically been supportive of liberalising drug laws. Their general election manifesto this year pledged to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis for medicinal use and to establish a review to assess the effectiveness of legalisation in the US and Uruguay.

Lib Dem peers have tabled a series of amendments to the government’s psychoactive substances bill, which seeks to outlaw legal highs. The amendments include the decriminalisation of the possession of all drugs for personal use and the legalisation of medicinal use of cannabis when it is prescribed by a doctor.

Lamb is competing with the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, Tim Farron, to replace Nick Clegg as party leader. Members will cast their ballots under an alternative vote system and the winner will be announced on 16 July.