"The ultimate taboo?"

Jackie Ashley complains that politicians will talk about sex and rock and roll but won't talk about drugs: "What is it about politicians and drugs?", she asks.

Um, unlike sex or rock and roll, drugs are illegal, Jackie - I think you'll find this is why politicians are reluctant to talk about using them. Personally, rather than seeing an end to this 'taboo', there should be more of them because the opinions of politicians on drugs aren't any more interesting than those they hold on sex or rock and roll. Take Gordon Brown, for example, who seems to be unaware of the fact that it's the 'changing nature of the stock' that's produced within the country that's the problem.

There's a wider point: what it it about journalists and drugs? Why do they insist on writing columns about them when they clearly have no idea what they're talking about? And why are they implicitly chiding Nick Clegg for promising to make political life as "open and accessible" as possible and at the same time refusing to be drawn on the question as to whether he's ever taken drugs? Instead, they might ask him what his policies on the matter are - and chide him instead for telling us how many people he's slept with. For who gives a shit about this? Journalists, apparently.

Update: Saw this from the spot where Telegraph readers are invited to give their view:

"What happend to freedo of choice if the individual wants to smoke it they will , if they make it a higher grade drug then people will be going to more dangerous ways of obtaining it.

Never done or hasn't done any of my friends or i any damage, certainly no more damage then what alchahol, stress, pollution ect has done to anyones body......."

Unsure if this is a spoof - like the one you get on this where the representative for the campaign to legalise cannabis says something like, "A lot of cats put down grass, man - and say shit about it, like it makes you lose your memory and shit but...uh...sorry - forgot where I was, man."