THERE is a disturbing and sinister twist today in the case of the Cabinet Minister's son arrested for allegedly selling cannabis to a Mirror investigative journalist.

For the journalist herself was arrested for possession of the drug when she went, by arrangement, to the police to hand over the substance she claimed the youth sold her.

But this development involves much more than the law's tendency to behave like an ass at times - so that, in this case, a reporter who sets out in the public interest to expose alleged drug dealing may, in turn, be charged with possession after obtaining it, not to commit a crime, but to uncover an alleged one.

No, it smacks of something else much worse.

And that is that it may be a venomous backlash - if not at the behest of the Minister in question, then on his behalf.

It may be nothing of the sort, but this extraordinary decision to turn on the accuser - by whoever it was made - cannot escape the reek of power and high office being used and abused out of spite. The fact is that, in isolation, this case is a piddling one.

In normal circumstances, someone selling £10-worth of cannabis to someone else in a pub, as this youth is alleged to have done, might only expect a caution.

It is only because of who the boy's father is in this instance that there is such a fuss.

But, after this disturbing twist, that is no longer the point.

This decision to turn the law on a reporter doing her job is ominously redolent of an attempt by someone in authority to use the law and self-interest to deter or punish legitimate investigative reporting by the press on matters of public interest.

That is not a piddling matter.

And no Minister, nor government, would want to be tainted by such a charge.

Yet that is what has happened now.

And whoever made or ordered this unwise decision may yet seriously regret it.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.