Nick Clegg: 'Classify alcohol as a drug'By Rachel Sylvester
27/10/2007
Interview
It is said that Nick Clegg is clever, charming and ambitious.
He speaks five languages - "six if you count human", his friends like to boast.
He has a high-flying wife, two young children and a glamorous circle of friends - this week, he met Halle Berry at a premiere for Sam Mendes' latest film, at school he acted opposite Helena Bonham Carter and in his youth he toured America with the Theroux brothers.So why on earth, at the age of 40, does he want to be leader of the Liberal Democrats, the poisoned chalice of politics?
"I'm a liberal," he says. "I find the phoniness about social justice in David Cameron's Conservatives deeply irritating, but equally I find the authoritarian tendencies of the New Labour Government absolutely abhorrent. The creed of liberalism has the best solutions to the contemporary anxieties people have."
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Drugs, though, he says must be much better controlled.
He wants the classification system torn up and controlled by an independent body, rather than politicians. "We've had one home secretary after another trying to grab headlines by suddenly pronouncing that x drug has to be a different category, but politicians shouldn't second guess what should be an evidence-based debate," he says.
"It's left the categorisation of drugs in a total mess." Controversially, he thinks legal drugs, including alcohol, should be included in any new classification system. If you're interested in reducing harm, you need to revisit the spectrum of drugs, both legal and illegal and categorise them according to the evidence…
A lot of the experts will tell you that alcohol abuse is as destructive to family and community cohesion as some illegal drugs."
There could be a new category "for drugs which are legal but have certain warnings attached to them," he adds.
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