Comment Central: Washington children who hit the headlines

The White House was rocked yesterday by claims that the daughter of Joe Biden, the Vice-President, was shown on video snorting cocaine.

The video purports to show Ashley Biden, 27, snorting lines of white powder at a house party in her home state of Delaware.

It surfaced days after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, declared that the United States shared the blame for Mexico's violent drug wars. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Mrs Clinton said on a trip to Mexico.

The video will embarrass Mr Biden, a teetotaller and an outspoken anti-drug crusader who coined the term “drug czar” in 1982 while campaigning for tougher action against illegal drugs.

However, the video is unlikely to undermine his position with President Obama. Mr Obama admitted in his own memoir that he had used marijuana and cocaine - but not heroin - as a youth. “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though,” he wrote in Dreams from My Father.

This month Mr Biden swore in a new US drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, whose stepson has a history of marijuana arrests.

The New York Post said that it had viewed about 90 seconds of a 43-minute video being offered for sale by an anonymous male acquaintance of Ms Biden, through a Washington lawyer.

The video showed a woman resembling the Vice-President's daughter taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder.

The woman then stands up and starts talking with other people in the room as a young man - identified as her boyfriend - watches from behind.

The camera, which appears not to be concealed, follows her as she moves around the room. At one point she shouts: “Shut the f*** up!”

Although the dialogue is unclear, representatives of the seller insist that that the woman speaks repeatedly about the drugs.

“At one point she pretty much complains that the line isn't big enough,” one told the newspaper. “And she talks about her dad.”

Radaronline.com, an online gossip site, said that one of its freelance reporters had also viewed the video.

It described a man cutting up five lines of what is said to be cocaine, as the woman claimed to be Ms Biden jokes that the lines are not big enough.

The man hands her a rolled-up dollar bill and she pulls back her hair and snorts a line. After she snorts the first line, she lifts her head to wipe her nose and then snorts a second and third line.

The New York Post said that the seller originally wanted to sell the video to the media for $2 million (£1.3million), before reducing it to $400,000. Radaronline.com put the asking price at $250,000. The video was supposedly taken this year.

Thomas Dunlap, the lawyer named by both outlets, reportedly stepped aside from representing the seller yesterday.

He told The Times: “We do not represent anyone involved in that. I do not have information.”

If the allegation is true, Ms Biden, a social worker in Delaware, would not be the first relative to embarrass the White House with alcohol or drug abuse. Gerald Ford's wife, Betty, struggled with alcoholism and addiction to painkillers and, after a family intervention, opened the famed Betty Ford Centre to addicts.

President Lyndon Johnson's brother, Sam, admitted in his memoir to being a problem drinker. Roger Clinton, dubbed Headache by his brother's Secret Service guards, spent a year in prison after his 1984 conviction for cocaine trafficking.

George W. Bush's twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, were charged with using a fake ID to buy margaritas in a Texan bar even though they were under the legal drinking age of 21.

Last month Mr Obama's halfbrother, George, was arrested in his native Kenya for alleged possession of marijuana.

In a so-called internet town hall meeting last week, Mr Obama was inundated with questions about whether he would legalise marijuana.

His terse answer: “No, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

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