Conservative leadership contender Michael Gove has dismissed suggestions he could be prevented from visiting the US as prime minister because of his admission he has taken cocaine.

Any UK citizen applying to travel to the US has to fill in a visa application form known as ESTA, which includes the question: “Have you ever violated any law related to possessing, using, or distributing illegal drugs?” Those replying yes can be barred from life from entering the country.

Mr Gove admitted to using cocaine several times at social occasions when he was a young man, but denied he had developed a habit.

He was asked on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show whether he had admitted having taken class A drugs in security vetting forms when he became a minister.

“No one asked,” he said. “I don’t believe that the question was ever raised. I don’t ever remember being asked at that time.

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“I don’t believe I’ve ever on any occasion failed to tell the truth about this when asked directly.”

He dismissed the idea that he could face a ban on entry to the US, saying: “I think it is the case that if I were elected prime minister of this country, then of course it would be the case that I would be able to go to the United States. It’s foolish to suggest otherwise.”

Asked whether he accepted that he had committed a crime, the former justice secretary told Marr: “Yes, it was a crime, it was a mistake. I deeply regret it.”

He said he was “fortunate” not to have gone to prison as a result of his drug use.

“I do think it was a profound mistake and I’ve seen the damage that drugs do,” he said. “I’ve seen it close up and also in the work that I’ve done as a politician. That’s why I deeply regret the mistake that I made.

“I took it on several occasions at social occasions more than 20 years ago when I was working as a journalist.”

He added: “I do have a profound sense of regret about it all and I am very, very aware of the damage that drugs do. I was justice secretary and during that time one of the things I said was that people should never be defined by the worst decision they made, they should be given a chance to redeem themselves and to change.”

He rejected the charge of hypocrisy, after having presided over a system as education secretary where teachers could be banned from the classroom for life if they use class A drugs.

He pointed out that this sanction related only to use during their professional careers.

And he added: “Of course, decisions we made in the past we should be held accountable for, but in this election what we are reflecting on is who has the ideas, the vision, the experience in office to be able to lead in the future. And I’m ready to lead on day one.”

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It has emerged Mr Gove criticised “middle-class professionals” who took drugs and wanted them to be legalised in a 1999 column for The Times.

In a column published just before the turn of the millennium, the now-environment secretary criticised Channel 4 for plans to mark the occasion with a night of programmes about cocaine and said there were three reasons preventing him from “joining London’s liberal consensus”.

He wrote: “The first is my belief that the energy with which so many journalists campaign for legalisation is driven not by logic but emotion. Guilt in particular.”

“There is no greater sin in journalistic eyes than hypocrisy. It justifies a score of tabloid stings, a hundred broken careers. How dare the minister endorse family values while himself straying? And how can I live with my occasional spliff unless I use my column to campaign for legalising drugs?”

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But a “greater sin than hypocrisy” was “the refusal to uphold values because one may oneself have fallen short of them”, he wrote.

The consequences of drug use to “middle-aged professionals” may be easier to cope with than to those from less fortunate backgrounds, he warned.

However, Mr Gove told Marr he had argued in the article: “If any of us lapse sometimes from standards that we should uphold, that is human. The thing to do is not necessarily to say the standards should be lowered, it is to reflect on the lapse and seek to meet standards in future.”

Home Secretary Sajid Javid, a leadership rival to Mr Gove, told Sky News: “It’s not for me to pass judgment on fellow candidates”, but added: “People do need to know – it doesn’t matter if you are middle class or not – anyone who takes class A drugs, they need to think about that supply chain that comes from Colombia, let’s say to Chelsea, and the number of lives that are destroyed along the way.”