Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley in cocaine claim

Has the new Obama administration suffered its first substance abuse scandal? Footage purporting to show Vice President Joe Biden's youngest daughter taking drugs has been offered for sale to the US media.

The video shows a young woman who resembles 27-year-old Ashley Biden snorting several lines of white powder through a red straw.

If genuine, the footage will be a major embarrassment for the Vice President, a teetotaler who coined the term 'drug czar' in 1982 while campaigning for tougher action against illegal drugs. Ashley Biden, a child welfare social worker, was frequently seen out on the election campaign trail with her father last year.

According to the New York Post and celebrity gossip website Radar Online, the footage was shot at a house party in Delaware earlier this year. The camera follows 'Ashley' around the room. After snorting coke off a desk she chats to others in the room, watched by a young man who is identified as her boyfriend. At one point she shouts, "Shut the fuck up!".

An anonymous male acquaintance of Ashley has been touting the 43-minute film to the US media via a lawyer. The New York Post, which had viewed a 90-second clip, said the seller originally wanted $2m, before dropping the price to $400,000. Radar Online said the price tag was $250,000. As yet, there have been no takers for the film.

It is by no means the first time the White House has been linked to accusations of alcohol and drug abuse. Gerald Ford's wife Betty and President Lyndon Johnson's brother Sam both struggled with alcoholism while Roger Clinton - nicknamed Headache by the Secret Service - spent a year in prison for cocaine trafficking in the mid-Eighties. In 2001 George W Bush's daughter's Barbara and Jenna were charged with using a fake ID to buy margaritas while still under the legal drinking age of 21. ·