In 1967, the then editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg, wrote a famous editorial with the headline “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, decrying the prison sentence given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones following a police raid on Richards’s Redlands mansion in Sussex.

Both musicians successfully appealed the sentences, but it was perhaps one of the key moments in music history when drug use and rock became forever entwined.

Almost half a century on, we live in a paradoxical state where we routinely consider wholesome behaviour to be “not very rock and roll”, yet the possibility of pop stars indulging in drug use still raises the moral hackles.

Zayn Malik, the 21-year-old East Bowling lad who shot to fame when he was plucked from the obscurity of the TV talent show X-Factor’s open auditions to form the subsequently world-beating pop band One Direction, is obviously no Mick Jagger, and would never claim to be.

But he and bandmate Louis Tomlinson have hit the headlines as much as Jagger and Richards after a video emerged of the two pals sharing what appeared to be a cannabis joint while on a tour bus in Peru.

Whether the item in question was indeed a joint, or a cigarette made with Golden Virginia, or even a rolled-up bus ticket, has not yet been formally determined. What is in no doubt, however, is that the debate has once again been ignited over whether pop stars are there to make music (and money), or act as role models for their young fans.

Joe Kean, team manager at the Unity Recovery Centre drugs support service in Manningham Lane, Bradford, told the T&A that whether they like it or not, bands such as One Direction have many impressionable young fans and they need to think about what sort of messages they send them.

He said: “The message they are sending out to their fans is that it’s an acceptable thing for us to be doing.”

One Direction are back in the UK now, and on Wednesday night played the Stadium of Light in Sunderland to thousands of adoring fans who did not seem to have been put off too much by the breaking controversy.

In the crowd was Dr Peter Mills, a lecturer in popular culture at Leeds Metropolitan University, with his 12-year-old daughter. So are One Direction comparable with the rock giants such as The Beatles and the Stones? And if so, can we expect any other sort of behaviour from them as typified those bands in the Sixties?

“The main comparison between One Direction and the likes of the Beatles and the Stones is in the commercial turnover they generate,” says Dr Mills.

“But they are very different sorts of bands. Whereas the Beatles were a group that got together themselves, you could say that One Direction are essentially employees – they have been appointed to certain roles, and that gives them certain responsibilities.”

There’s a certain irony in the rock world, says Dr Mills. On the one hand, those in the industry who don’t indulge in what we’ve come to think of as traditional rock behaviour – drinking, drugs, wild parties – are considered faintly ridiculous and square – witness the mockery heaped on Cliff Richard for his wholesome lifestyle.

On the other, bands such as One Direction, marketed squarely at a young demographic, he says, “suddenly find they have the world at their feet, but they’re told they can’t have the sorts of things that other people their age have.”

Dr Mills says: “When Paul McCartney was asked by a journalist if he’d ever done drugs, he said yes because he didn’t want to lie, but neither did he want to court controversy – he’d been asked the question. John Lennon said that he didn’t want people to see the Beatles as role models – that was loading too much responsibility on musicians for other people’s behaviour.”

William Rees-Mogg’s editorial in 1967 called for “tolerance and equality” over Mick Jagger’s prosecution for drugs offences: “It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse.

“There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.”

Zayn Malik has also received more attention over this episode than “any purely anonymous young man”, but perhaps that must come with his new territory.

Dr Mills says: “My daughter is 12 and was about the middle age range of the fans in Sunderland. One Direction do have a responsibility to their fans – they are the faces of a brand. But this is not going to bring them down – they’re far too popular for that.”