I am willing to bet that wannabe Prime Minister, Michael Gove, while an admitted ex cocaine user, has never lain coked out of his nut in a back court in Gallowgate under someone’s window.

I am also prepared to wager that Boris Johnson, another with designs on Number Ten Downing Street, who has also admitted to taking cocaine, has never resorted to street prostitution to buy drugs.

Their drug taking was “experimental” something they did in their younger days before they became the fine upstanding members of the Conservative Party that maintains the hard line (no pun intended) on drugs.

They are able to say they made a mistake, regretted their behaviour and stand full square behind the war on drugs.

While legally it is the same, their drug taking past is completely different to the drug taking present of the problem drug users who need help not more punishment.

They are so different they cannot be compared.

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Gove and Johnson are examples of those who do not go onto be problem drug users and lead a life of misery because they had safeguards in place.

They had the benefit of an education, a well-paid job and a future they could see that did not involve taking their worldly possessions to Cash Converters to get through the week.

I am also prepared to state that among the 650 MPs at Westminster there will be some who are currently engaged in consuming illegal drugs in some form.

But they do not have the same problems as those who they are legislating or failing to legislate to help.

Gove was taking his drugs at parties attended by other professionals who could afford their recreational habit.

He was able to decide, wisely, to no longer take the drug and focus on other things in life like career, family politics and the pursuit of power.

He was able to do this because he was surrounded by the networks that allowed him to do so.

Rather than sticking to the criminalisation and punishment line to tackle drugs he should be able to recognise that not everyone who took drugs is the same as him.

That some people were not taking the drugs because they were already having a great old time drinking expensive wine in a nice apartment with like minded people just wanting to relax after a hard week at work.

Instead many were taking the drugs because they couldn’t see any hope or prospect of a life anywhere remotely near that to which Mr Gove and Johnson were on the path to.

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Many middle class people have taken and do take drugs but do not go on to be problem drug users in the same numbers as those in deprived communities do.

There are reasons for this which have been explained by experts, the reason is deprivation.

If those men want to use their experience of illegal drugs then they could maybe visit one of the communities were there are many men and women who like them took drugs for the first time as an experiment with friends and didn’t think it would lead to a life of addiction.

They could speak to those people and try to understand why their life went in a different direction.

Then they could maybe see that what people need to get off the drugs that have consumed them is help.

And see that as well as tackling the supply of drugs and trying to stop it reaching our communities in the first place, that a different approach may be needed for those who take them.

The Tories can still stick to their war on drugs line by tackling dealers and supply chains.

But if they want to be the compassionate conservatives that we hear about then move from treating addiction as a public health issue and not criminal.

They could start by giving serious consideration to the benefits of a Safe Drugs consumption Facility in Glasgow instead of the blind refusal based on party dogma to appeal to a narrow demographic.

The very same demographic that will decide who becomes our next Prime Minister.