Drugs: A Unique Perspective

Having a totally novel view of an age old issue, like drugs policy, must make you a fool or a genius.

Peter Hitchens's blast at the last 40 years of successive Governments' inability to eradicate the problems, which all western and many eastern counties have suffered, certainly begs the reader to make that choice.

Hitchins takes a very facile view of politicians, police and the drug users' motivations and concludes they all fail to attain the Hitchensian mark of morality. If he could turn the clock back, he would not spare his ire from alcohol and would, "drive it from our society."

His diatribe now fills an entire book:The War We Never Fought. However, his title is essentially correct:: we have never fought a war on drugs in Britain. It would contravene our longstanding tradition of tolerance for one thing.

Certainly we have drug problems. There are roughly 300,000 problematic drug users of a population of 63 million. But the UK's social and economic problems are piffling compared to frontline areas where the drugs war has actually been fought such as Columbia in 80s and 90s and Mexico today.

But enforcement is his answer. To Hitchens the mere threat of arrest and imprisonment is sufficient deterrent to stop drug use in its tracks. It isn't. But why does he think that? Perhaps when he were a lad he felt the stern word from a rather batey local sergeant was the absolute end. It is possible he has built his entire world view on these tiny convictions.

The text of his 'taster' article to the greater opus amounts to long tracts of personal assertion uninterupted by any supporting quotes from experts. It is just a litany of assumptions based on how the world doesn't work. At times he finds himself tweaking the truth. For example, he declares the drugs listed in Britain's Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 are there because there is "no safe dose." I have never read those words in any article or speech before. About specifc drugs, yes, but not all of them. The Act actually refers to drugs, "capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem."

But with that one bound Hitchens is able to describe cannabis as, "one of the most dangerous drugs in the world." Over two million people in Briatin have some cannabis each year but as common drug users he asserts this mass of people "often take to ruthless thieving."

As a journalist with the Daily Mail, he turns his own testimony full circle by presenting cannabis as a drug of violence because of numerous "newspaper accounts." His unilateralism is now complete.

Hitchens is right that it is possible to create a society where there is barely any trace of drug use. Unfortunately in these societies they also cut limbs from petty criminals and stone rape victims to death. Now that's what I call enforcement.

A Battle Royal

The British establishment has been through the wringer in recent years.

First, MPs and peers found their personal standings plummet as the expenses scandal revealed a great many had been bending, and in some cases serially breaking, the rules on their allowances. Huge settlement checks were written, careers fell and some were even imprisoned.

Next came the phone-hacking scandal which saw the voluntary closing by the Murdochs of the 150 year old News of the World and many senior police at the Met swept out of their offices. Almost every week gangs of journalists appear in court for plea hearings before their trials. Some will being go down.

The MPs have had an election since and have put their calamity behind them. The media are still in the midst of the Leveson Inquiry so cannot display any relaxed mood. There have recently been some isolated protesting voices suggesting the Inquiry has had a “chilling effect” on news reporting.

Of course this is all a lot of nonsense. The tabloid editors who are moaning have simply found there is a lot more criticism of their salacious stories and the publics appetite for lurid tales, celebrity intimidation and entrapment appears to have waned somewhat.

The editors have been waiting for an issue where they can fight back. The good old days of humiliation, harassment and blatant false reporting may be gone for now but they cannot let go just yet.

This week they found their opportunity. It was not a tale of a vast environmental cover-up by a multinational. It was not exposing criminal gangs preying on vulnerable people. It concrned a dispute over the publication of a nude picture of Prince Harry.

It would seem this “story” encapsulates the cause the editors want to hold up as emblematic of their “rights” of papers to publish. Former News of the World executive editor, Neil Wallis, took to the TV studios to declare, laughably, “Leveson is… killing investigative journalism in this country.” I would argue paying £10k then printing pictures taken at a drunken party in Vegas does not make you Woodward, nor Bernstein.

Wallis went on. Some might say, too long. “"Newspaper editors, newspaper executives are terrified of controversy now. If they get a controversial story that causes a furore an editor could lose his job, advertisers could be panicked into not advertising in their newspapers, because the mood in the newspaper industry is now so febrile. Some people might say that the Prince Harry story is a classic example of where the newspaper should basically wave two fingers at Leveson … and just stick it in the paper.”

The Sun did that anyway.

Mr Wallis, besides trying to resurrect his PR career, has tried to fix our attention on the wrong target. The embargo on publication was sought by St. James’s Palace (aka Prince Charles) who argued, unconvincingly, it was an invasion of privacy. Those sort of pointless restrictions from the Royal family have been going on for decades and has nothing whatever to do with Leveson.

And to elevate the battle over publishing a pixilated naked Royal to the denying the basic freedoms of the press, shows the tabloid editors for what they are – compulsive recyclers of trivia, nonsense and nudity.

Still Beating Down

In US election vernacular 'beating down' means being on the defensive and as Republican candidate Mitt Romney's team said themselves, "if you are on the defensive you are losing."

But the polls show he is not losing by much at the moment. But these elections go at different paces. Unemployment rates are suppressing any bounce for Obama in the immediate term. But in the 'now to November' term, Romney is getting thrashed.

It began last month with a rare agressive move from the Democrats to raise the issue of his departure from Bain Capital and refusal to disclose any more than the minimum of tax returns. It means the issue is alive between now and election day. It fits in with the narrative of him being massive wealthy and with offshore trusts. It will become relevant all over again when he picks his VP choice and what returns they are willing show.

His selective tour of Europe and Middle East was in diplomatic terms "a car wreck." He failed to demonstrate elementary political insight and acted like a large-checked know all yank tourist. His first mistake was to upset the US's greatest ally, the UK and unite a divided nation against him, culminating in a scoffing public putdown from the PM. His panderng in Israel to the Florida Jewish vote was embarrassing and grossly insulting to the Palestinians whose poverty was attributed to a different "culture" without mentioning the economic blockade. His reference to the "hand of providence" to economic development also added to Romney's image as a religious nut.

The Republicans have been playing a long game too. In many swing states such as Ohio, Florida and Virginia they have changed voter registration rules to make it much harder to vote. For example discontinuing early voting which would mostly apply to working classes who will certainly favour Obama.

The critical episode will be the debates, where they meet one-on-one. Here the President will more easily expose, through his superior debating skills, Romney's "voodoo" economic plan which will coincidentally benefit millionaires like him.

Americans will want to re-elect Obama but whether they still can when they get to the voting booth is another matter.