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.
No comments:
Post a Comment