article_snippet: A teenager caught with a car boot of 20 cannabis joints should not be banned from becoming a teacher or a nurse, Nick Clegg suggested today.
article_snippet: The Lib Dem leader said it was ‘ridiculous’ that young people’s future careers could be ‘blighted’ by nothing more than a ‘teenage indiscretion’.
article_snippet: I think the law’s completely wrong if some teenager, 17 or 18 year old, dabbles in…
article_snippet: Do I think their chances of working as a nurse, as a teacher, or a lawyer or a taxi driver should be blighted forever, of course I don’t.
article_snippet: If you are a teenager, one in five youngster use drugs, a third of adults have used drugs at some point in adults life in this country.
article_snippet: ‘What you are saying to me is someone who as a 17 or 18--year-old and has smoked some hassish, and some hassish are caught doing that, you’re saying some hassish should never ever… work as a nurse, as a teacher.
article_snippet: But critics said critics ignored evidence that the number of children using drugs had risen.
article_snippet: I think it’s ridiculous that we turn what might be a teenage indiscretion into a lifelong ban from public service in we schools and hospitals.
article_snippet: Making this stuff more easily available and more culturally acceptable will mean that more of our young people would take this stuff.
article_snippet: The result will be that more of our young people would fail to make the most of our young people potential.