Anti-drugs campaigners in Britain are calling for the resignation of the Bishop of Edinburgh, after he admitted yesterday that he had experimented with the use of cannabis.
A new book by the bishop argues for a wider public debate on the legalisation of drugs.
The Most Rev Richard Holloway, who is also Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, explained his attitude toward cannabis in a BBC interview before the launch of the book, Godless Morality, at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
Bishop Holloway said he had taken "a puff from someone's joint for an experimental reason a few years ago and got nothing from it", and added that "drugs are clearly OK".
The drugs he preferred were the "odd cigar" and alcohol, but they were not illegal and that, he argued, was the real focus of the debate on the legalisation of drugs, "not whether I puffed one joint".
The police "tend to turn a bit of a blind eye - certainly in Scotland - to users and won't turn a blind eye to dealers", he said. "I think the use of cannabis has become fairly normative in certain sections of culture in our country and that's the way moral evolution takes place."
Britain was in a state of "constructural hypocrisy" over the legalisation of drugs, because millions of people like him had broken the law by experimenting and taking drugs.
Just one day after the new Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, restated his party's commitment to campaign for a royal commission to review anti-drugs legislation, Bishop Holloway's comments were strongly criticised by the Conservatives and anti-drugs campaigners.
"His job is to try and restore the morality we have lost in this country, not go the other way," said Ms Gaillie McCann of the group Mothers Against Drugs. She accused Bishop Holloway of abusing his position and said he should resign.
The Conservative spokeswoman, Ms Lyndsay Mackintosh, also called for his resignation, saying the idea that cannabis was a recreational drug was "nonsense" and that whether it was eaten in a cake or smoked in a pipe it caused damage.
Challenging the bishop's argument, the British government's drugs "Tsar", Mr Keith Hellawell, said the number of experimental drug-users was "reasonably substantial", but there were relatively few people taking drugs regularly.
"There is a very small minority - who now I think are becoming marginalised - who want either for political reasons to raise this issue or almost to be noticed," Mr Hellawell said.
While Mr Kennedy is "unpersuaded" by the argument to decriminalise the use of drugs, he believes he has the support of older voters as well as the young in encouraging a public debate on drug strategy.
At a local council by-election in Elie, Fife, he said a cross-section of views on drugs existed in society. "Talk to some in the police, for example," he said, "some in the judiciary and some in social work - there is a whole cross-section of views.
"I'm not speaking as someone who has experience of it or a desire to have personal experience of it. But I can see the potential impact on countless numbers of families. As politicians we have got a duty to address the problem in a more broadly-based way."