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Conservative MP Louise Mensch has admitted that taking Class A drugs left her with “long-term mental health” problems.

Ms Mensch, 41, one of David Cameron’s most recognisable young MPs, revealed that drugs caused her to suffer bouts of anxiety.

“It is something that I regret incredibly, that in my youth that I messed with my brain,” she said. “I said we all do stupid things when we are young. It’s had long-term mental health effects on me. It’s caused me to be more anxious than I need to be. It’s nothing that anybody needs to glorify.”

Under her maiden name Louise Bagshawe, she is a best-selling chic-lit author and is married to rock music manager Peter Mensch. She sprang to prominence as one of the MPs on the Culture select committee who quizzed Rupert Murdoch.

Last year, she admitted taking hard drugs while working in the music industry in her twenties, after being contacted by a person claiming to be an investigative journalist.

Her confession about the ill-effects came on BBC Question Time during a debate on calls to decriminalise hard drugs. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke this week stated the authorities were “losing the war on drugs”. She said: “The plain fact of the matter is drugs are incredibly addictive and destroy lives. Given that scourge is there, the question is what you do about it.

“I am somebody who has used dugs in the past, I have used class A drugs in the past.”

Asked by chairman David Dimbleby to say which drugs she took, Ms Mensch said: “I have never said what Class A drugs I did. I don’t want to say so because I do not want to glorify those drugs and give those drugs a great name.

“I did serious drugs and it messed with my head, and it’s a terrible thing and I do not want to see other young people exposed to that by legalisation.” Campaigners and health experts praised her candour today. Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, said he would write asking her to give evidence to an inquiry into drugs they were undertaking.

“We need to know from individuals what effects drugs had on them,” he said.

Jane Harris, at Rethink Mental Illness, said: “Drugs affect people in different ways, but there is a strong link between the use of drugs like cannabis and cocaine, particularly by young people, and mental health problems.”