The Cabinet Office Minister, Mo Mowlam, has insisted she is still the right person to lead the British government's campaign against illegal drugs, despite admitting that she tried marijuana as a student.

In a television interview, she said she'd never attempted to conceal that she had been, in her words, "a child of the Sixties." She said she had tried marijuana but not liked it.

She was adamant that the drug had never been an important ingredient of her life as a student in Britain and the United States. The British government has strongly resisted calls for the legalisation of marijuana.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service