David Cameron has rejected the call for a Royal Commission on the UK's drugs laws. This request did not come from a bleary-eyed, teen stoner sporting a T-shirt that with an alien head and the logo 'Take Me to Your Dealer', which might explain his refusal. No, this proposal came from a House of Commons select committee on home affairs, none of whose members wore T-shirts saying 'Adihash', 'Coke Is It' or 'Marijuana - Millions stoned' in the style of the McDonald's logo. One MP was wearing a T-shirt under his business shirt with a picture of a small fat-faced dog with a diagonal red line through it, strapline 'Say No Pugs'. What that proves is anyone's guess, perhaps that this MP genuinely thinks comedy tees are funny or that he failed to do the washing and had to substitute this weak dog joke top for a vest.
Whatever the select committee may or may not have been wearing, under or over their business dress, did not apparently influence Dave's decision to dismiss this plea out of hand. He gave three reasons in a short interview. As he was pressed for time, I have helpfully filled in what he was trying to express.
1. 'We have a policy and it's working, drug use is coming down'
What I meant to say was the government has a policy of ignoring its own scientific advice and that of senior police officers. We prefer instead to stick with prohibition because we are terrified of hostile articles by the likes of Melanie Philips or Richard Littlejohn in the tabloids. Strangely despite my obsession with opinion polls, in the case of drugs' laws, I prefer to ignore the views of over 70% of the population.
Drug usage has come down a little bit, so I will pretend that there's some connection between our policy and the outcome. Quite why it's taken 30 years for the identical policies to have effect I won't bother to explain and if drug use were to go up again, I will be very quick to deny any link between consumption and policy. As I have conveniently avoided discussing the counterfactual, you don't have a chance to compare what might have happened in the UK with different policies. I won't do this, because the example of Portugal in recent years disproves my original point.
2. 'We need to do more to keep drugs out of our prisons'
Rather than answer your question about the need for a Royal Commission, I have instead mentioned an different issue which is the systemic smuggling perpetrated by our prison officers. This relates to drugs prohibition in exactly the opposite way I'm suggesting, as were drugs decriminalised, no prison warder need smuggle the substances inside nor would there be any inflated profits by virtue of their illegality.
Not letting facts or logic upset my polemic, I have instead used the simple, yet effective, trick of saying certain words close to each other. This creates an entirely artificial and fallacious choice in your mind thanks to verbal proximity: support for a Royal Commission equates with supporting more drugs in prisons. This is absolute nonsense, but as I've said it with the sort of serious face usually reserved for the death of an elderly family pet you might just buy it. To be honest, the only kind of person who would actually support the crazy idea of more drugs in prisons would be a prison officer. He's hoping to save enough to buy that static caravan he's always dreamed of the Pembrokeshire coast.
3. 'We need to focus on [the above] than a very long term Royal Commission'.
I'm going to stick with the same basic formula for point 1 and 2, which is to say things one after another which have no connection in the belief that most people are too stupid to spot logical flaws. This is pretty much what passes for serious debate in this country about drug policy.
You might have thought that as a rightwing free-market advocate running a Coalition that desperately needs to raise runds the pure economics of legalisation might appeal to me. Nope. I would much rather be consistently and hopelessly wrong that embrace any hint of the complexity such issues present in the real world.
And I won't trouble myself with the inconvenient fact that if the UK drug laws were as rigorously enforced on rich white males as they are on poor black males, yours truly along with many of his cabinet colleagues and associates would have a criminal record.
Now if you'll excuse me George Osborne and I are rather busy at the moment trying to do more damage to the UK economy than any other individual in the last 100 years. We are currently joint 3rd with Goering.
Showing posts with label Drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drugs. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
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.
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.
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