Snow Blind

Dear  Reader

Time for your second hit of Gorilla Philosophy and this week, the typing ape has gone drug crazy, so roll up that twenty pound note and snort yourself a sinusful of powdered politics that isn't cut with dogma or soundbites. The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, the ACMD, will be publishing a new report highlighting the dangers of cocaine. Britain is now number for cocaine use in Europe,at last back in pole position! Britannia Rules the Raves! But seriously, we give a big monkey whoop that a report is coming out. As is common knowledge, coke dealers and their clients are keen followers of government publications, indeed the consensus amongst Kentish Town street hustlers was the Vickers report into banking was a missed opportunity to separate retail and investment activities. They also wanted to know if anyone wanted to buy some crack.  Warnings against coke's dangerous effects are everywhere: Tara Palmer-Tompkinson's nose, the third Oasis album, an upmarket bar in City after 10pm and everything Charlie Sheen has said or done, ever.  None of these horrors stop the devotees of the naughty salt, so a spiral bound slab of bureaucratic-speak won't make a toot in hell's difference.

Cocaine is a dangerous drug not least for its extraordinary bullshit producing properties; you don't even to take it to start spouting arrogant, strident nonsense. Take for example  the 'Get Tough' brigade, apparently as a result of the permissive society (possibly a lesbian gay support group in Haringey), the whole of the UK has been overtaken by coke fiends. Maybe the typing ape is being a touch unfair, but their solution to the cocaine problem would be imprison dealers,  users and people who use the word coke, even if they mean a popular brand of soft drink. So throw another 100,000 people in jail and another 200,000n suspects and then what to do with them? Flogging is often mentioned, whether that's a criminal justice measure or a private fantasy, who knows. It is very hard to get inside minds so tiny. Obviously they overlook a few important points such as the facts. The police and courts generally do lock up cocaine dealers when they catch them. Contrary to tabloid hysteria, they go to prisons not five star hotels, where they sit in a cell for 23 hours a day. Fortunately the 'Get Tough' mob don't allow reality to get in the way of a good fairytale, which goes like this: Back in the 1950s, there used to a be country called England where everything was perfect, women stayed at home, there were no blacks and most importantly no drugs. So all we need to do is turn Britain into one enormous period drama, coke problem solved. You do wonder who's been taking what sometimes.

This ape has a modest proposal to reduce cocaine's harmful effects, which is to stop wasting police time interdicting a relatively harmless substance. Yes, The Shamen were right, Ebeneezer's Good. If ecstasy were more widely available, the police would no longer be breaking up street brawls on Friday evenings, it would be group hugs. Bouncers could deal with trouble using only a head massage. If people used MDMA at work, you would just have a different type of office bullshit. Instead of Powerpoint presentations about customer focus, there would be long rambles about how everything is connected, you know, like one massive brain filled with love, complete with trance soundtrack and a giant inflatable pink octopus. There would be some harmful effects - fashion decisions made under the drug's influence are questionable. White gloves for example, should incur a custodial sentence.

Ah, but isn't E the killer drug, what about Leah Betts? 100,000s of people die every year from alcohol and cigarettes, yet they are available on every street corner. Public policy on ecstasy has been hijacked by bereaved parents as if their personal tragedies made them overnight authorities on substance abuse. Following this logic  if a member of your family is eaten by a shark, you become a shark expert. You don't. You get very upset, probably never watch Jaws again and might order shark's fin soup wherever possible as form of species-wide payback. What you do not become is a world authority on marine predators.

Of course relaxing the stance on one drug would never happen, because that would 'Going Soft'. We've had thirty years of the hard man approach, isn't it time for a big group hug?

Footnote:


The pairing of 'Misuse' and 'Drugs' is illogical and nonsensical. Drugs alter your mental state, that's what they do. 'Misuse' implies there is some other way you should employ the substance. Maybe you can use cocaine to grout tiles, but you probably shouldn't unless you want to have very paranoid showers where all the tiles fall out.