ThunderDragon Blog

Labour’s anti-drugs campaign has not really achieved its aim. Why? Because cocaine used has doubled since it was launched.

[Home Office] data show[s] that even after a modest fall in cocaine use from 2006/07 to 2007/08, the drug is roughly twice as heavily used now as it was a decade ago.

Labour launched a ten-year national drug strategy in 1998, promising to “focus on those that cause the greatest damage, including cocaine”.

In the 1998 crime survey, 1.3 per cent of people said they had taken cocaine at least once in the previous year. This year, the figure was 2.3 per cent.

In 1998, some 0.5 per cent of people had used cocaine in the previous month. Now, it is 1 per cent.

However, the total amount of the drug seized actually fell by 15 per cent a year, and it has halved in five years. (The Telegraph)

That is a a vey large increase. When the fact that the amount of coaine seized by the police has fallen at the same time, what does that tell us? That this anti-drugs campaign has failed miserably.

Personally, I couldn’t care less what people do their own bodies so long as they don’t harm anyone else, but when an anti-drugs campaign encourages drug taking then there’s a problem somewhere. Most likely with the moralising of the campaigners, as usual.

Yet again, the ‘celebrity drug culture’ is in the news.

Jurors should be allowed to decide if celebrities caught on camera snorting white powder were taking illegal drugs, the Met police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, claims.

Blair referred to a recent case when Kate Moss was pictured in a newspaper snorting lines of white powder but no charges were brought. Jurors should be allowed to decide if suspects were taking illegal substances, he told the London Evening Standard. (Guardian)

It’s a story that’s frequently in the papers. Moss, Doherty, Winehouse… the ‘drug taking’ celebrity. People are almost lining up to condemn their behaviour. And yes, I agree - it’s not respectable, they’re not using their profile to behave as role models. I was glad when Doherty was eventually sent to prison, it showed clearly that his antics were wrong.

What annoys me though is that it’s often seen as something new. Pete Doherty is inadvertently an ‘ambassador’ for Britain’s youth in the 21st century - always drunk, frequently high on drugs. People suggest boycotting their products - Amy Winehouse’s own family asking people not to buy her music.

Nonsense.

If the Beatles hadn’t dabbled with drugs, we wouldn’t be able to listen to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and other legendary pieces. Status Quo without the associated lifestyle wouldn’t have been quite the same.

A very interesting article on the BBC Magazine looks back at the antics of Oliver Reed, Richard Burton, and other ‘hellraisers’ of that era. Robert Sellers has recently authored a book looking at them:

“We look back with rose-tinted glasses because they were guilty of some very unpalatable behaviour yet they achieved mythical status.

“Not many people saw them paralytic and drunk like we do today with Amy Winehouse. The 24-hour media wasn’t around in the 60s.”

Richard Burton would throw up in the foyers of hotels, but if top stars did that now, he says, someone would be there with a mobile phone to take a picture.

Most of their antics - like O’Toole going for a drink in Paris and waking up in Corsica, or Richard Burton downing 48 shots of whisky on a film set - were reported years later.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head. Yes, I think that drugs have got ‘harder’ in recent years - I don’t know of any stories of Richard Harris snorting lines of coke - but that’s society changing generally. I’d say that celebrities are just as much as hell raisers as previously. What’s changed isn’t the face of celebrity; but the projection of it.

Going back to Ian Blair’s comments then. Illegal drug use should be prosecuted where it can. However, it is being so - otherwise Pete Doherty wouldn’t have gone to jail. I’m on the side of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald. The law in the UK (so far) isn’t totalitarian. People can only be sent to jail if there’s no reasonable doubt that they committed a criminal act. I don’t think anyone would want that to change (excepting issues of detention before charge - that’s a different can of worms entirely). It’s “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer“, as William Blackstone stated. Sir Ken thinks that Sir Ian has completely got the wrong end of the stick.

“I’m extremely surprised by comments attributed to Sir Ian Blair. If he is accurately quoted he appears to have completely misunderstood the law.

“The issue was not whether the white powder that Kate Moss was snorting was cocaine or talcum powder. The law required us to prove that it was either a class A drug or a class B drug. We could only base our case on one of these options.

“It was impossible for us to do this since cocaine - a class A drug - and amphetamine - a class B drug are both white powders.” (The Telegraph)

We must investigate all allegations of celebrity drug abuse (or other criminal matters). But not at the expense of the rule of the law. And we also must be aware that they’re in the public eye - and their indiscretions are now more public. Therefore, we also shouldn’t victimise them. It’s certainly nothing that new…

~ Asp

Cannabis is to be “upgraded” to a class B drug again, despite it being an utterly pointless gesture - especially since the police are already saying it will be “difficult to enforce” the stricter laws. After all, if they don’t pay attention now, I doubt they’ll bother when it suddenly overnight moves from a C to B grade substance. After all, all it brings is the possibility of an extra three years in prison - if they get caught and the police and CPS bother to waste our money prosecuting them, that is.

This advice even goes against that of the government’s own drug experts. What was that about “listening” again…?

Jacqui Smith says she is doing it because of the so-called “clear and serious risk to mental health”. Yet what about the very clear physical health risks of other legal drugs - such as alcohol, cigarettes, medicines… Are they to become illegal now as well?! No. Because that would be even more stupid than this announcement.

People make their own choices in life. if they want to smoke cannabis, let them. The papers are full of sob stories saying “MY CHILD DIED BECAUSE OF CANNABIS!” But that is no reason to change a law. They could just as easily be filled of equivalent stories on alcohol and cigarettes, but that is no reason to make them illegal substances.

In the end, it is their choice. If you educate people properly, then they will generally steer clear of this sort of drug, or at least be making a well-informed decision of their own. That is the only way to reduce the consumption of harmful drugs [and harmful excessive consumption of legal ones]: education. But then again, with the way that this government has managed to fail educating our children with the very basics, I doubt they could achieve this properly, anyway.

It also massively hypocritical of this Cabinet to attack drug use, considering their own histories…

You’re a drug addict? Here, have an iPod on the government!

“DRUG addicts are to be offered gift vouchers and prizes on the National Health Service under plans by the government’s medicine watchdog to encourage them to stay clean.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) will recommend the system of inducements, which could enable clinics to offer televisions and iPods as prizes, to tackle the burgeoning drugs problem…” (Sunday Times)

Why should drug addicts get any financial incentives to stop? If they don’t want to stop for other reasons, this will only keep them off the drugs for as long as the money keeps on coming in. This is totally wrong.

Supporters claim that the money spent of giving addicts iPods will be “recouped” through them making fewer demands of the NHS. Despite the fact that the money won’t be “recouped” but just not spent on it, they may be right. But that doesn’t support the idea that financial incentives will make addicts quit. Beyond the problems of cost, it is morally a bad thing to do. It is effectively rewarding people because they have broken the law and have now stopped. It’s like giving a burglar money because he hasn’t robbed your house this week - utterly absurd.

Those who don’t take drugs and get addicted are effectively being screwed over by this because they haven’t broken the law/got addicted beforehand. If these addicts want to get “clean” then they don’t need financial incentives to do so. if they can only stop tasking drugs in return for iPods and the like, as soon as they stop getting given them, or have what they want, then they will just revert to their old state, costing the NHS double. If addicts want to quit, they don’t need to be given money to do so. If they don’t want to quit, all the money in the world won’t make a difference.

The revelations are coming thick and fast today on cabinet ministers and their “youthful” drug use. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary started this off by admitting that, when asked whether or not she had ever smoked cannabis, saying:

“I have. I did when I was at university. I think it was wrong that I smoked it when I did. I have not done for 25 years.”

This has now been followed by revelations from Alistair Darling that he had smoked cannabis “occasionally in my youth”, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Andy Burnham, who had smoked it “once or twice at university”, Hazel Blears who tried cannabis “once or twice when very young,” and, surprisingly, Ruth Kelly as well.

And my comment, as I said when David Cameron was accused of smoking cannabis, is: So what? Who cares? So you smoked cannabis when you were at university? Many people do. Politicians can have pasts too! It may have mattered in the past, but not any more.

It is all due to the government wanting to reclassify cannabis back to a Class B drug, and being able to point the finger at David Cameron for not having answered whether or not he has smoked cannabis in his past. This sort of mass “coming out” will protect them all from any negative repercussions from these “revelations”, but also makes them wide open to the sort of joke I have used as the title of this post. By doing this, they don’t necessarily win or lose anything, except for maybe a bit of disgruntlement from some especially anti-drug campaigners.

It is amusing that all the politicians who admit having tried cannabis also all say that they didn’t enjoy it, or that it didn’t do anything for them. What a load of bollocks they’re talking! People wouldn’t do it if it had no effect, and be refusing to admit that they liked it even the tiniest bit gains them no points back from the anti-drugs squad or wins them any from those who have or do smoke cannabis.

Reclassifying cannabis back up to Class B isn’t going to work very well, and their justifications for it on the grounds of fears that its use is linked to psychotic illness, depression and suicide among young people are pretty slim. I’ve pretty much come round to thinking that cannabis should be legal, since it barely seems to have any worse effects than drinking alcohol or cigarette smoking, and being legal would cut down the extent to which it is a “gateway drug”.

Morning has broken - and it broke without warning whilst I was standing outside waiting for an ambulance. Last night (and this morning) I was on duty as a St. John Ambulance first aider on my university campus during the event known as “The End” - the night after all exams have finished.

Thus we started on duty for 10pm, having been there earlier for briefings etc., and almost immediately started receiving casualties of the type that were to be by far the most common over the night - cuts, specifically to the feet. Most of these were caused in girls who were wearing, of all things, sandals and flip-flops on a night known for the amounts of broken glass that litters the ground of the “squares” in the university. Idiots.

Another common cause of patients was sheer drunkenness, usually accompanied by vomiting and other leaking of bodily fluids. Lovely, indeed. For the vast majority of these there was little we could do except wait with them until they sobered up enough to go home alone, or friends willing to look after them were found.

And this continued all night, with injuries of various degrees of seriousness, 26 over the night, six of which went to hospital by ambulance, plus several others who were advised to make their own way. With the eleven first aiders we had on duty, we just about had enough - there were, however, situations when a couple extra would have been useful. This can be contrasted with the six first aiders which the Students Union Ents team had originally only wanted us to provide (because they would have to pay for them) but eventually a compromise of nine had been arrived at - still below what we provided and which would not have been enough for the number of injuries we received, especially considering the cupboard-sized first aid room we are given to use [literally, it fits one stretcher and two chairs in it. And that is all.].

Eventually we finished at around 3.30am, having finally got to a stage where we could finish. But the night was not over yet - for as a few of us made our way off campus, we were called to yet another patient. This man had quite obviously been taking a lot of drugs, although he absolutely refused to admit it - it was obvious through his mannerisms, huge pupils, and constant teeth-grinding. But there was nothing that we could do for him, although he was eventually sent off in an ambulance, that was more due to there being no way that he could get home than due to any real medical need.

One of the most annoying things about being on duty surrounded by drunks is that there is always at least one or two who approach offering “help” with providing first aid cover, citing a course taken in school or Scouts and the like several years previously. Like the idiot today who approached a drunk we were dealing with - despite there being three of us standing around her in bright green jumpsuits and hi-vis jackets. People like that annoy me.

Eventually I got home, at around 5am or so after a very long day - and whilst we had been treating our extra patient, the sun had dawned and night had turned into day. So instead of going to bed when I got home, I had a bath to remove the almost-certainly lingering smell of vomit, shit, dried blood, sweat, and stale beer. And now I feel much, much better. Though tired - but I can’t go to bed because I’ll sleep the entire day away!

Morning has thus broken - even though I haven’t actually got to bed.

Click for larger image

Well, my Students Union seems to prefer tackling speed limits. They want to lower the speed limit on one part of a dual carriageway from 70 to 50mph because two people have been killed crossing the road there in the last ten months, and some beforehand as well. They also want a foot bridge to be built over the road. Yet there is an underpass, lit and with CCTV, just a hundred yards or so away - and a zebra crossing just a bit further up the road. Pretty much all of the students killed there were either drunk, high on drugs, or both. As far as I am concerned, they have only themselves to blame.

The SU has set up a petition, most recently signed by both the local MPs - Lib Dem Bob Russell (Colchester) and Conservative Bernard Jenkin (North Essex) [both pictured above] - to call for the changes they wish made. The MPs are just doing what MPs do best - self-publicity.

It is ridiculous. The road is perfectly safe. I myself have crossed it hundreds of times, and so long as you are sober there is no problem, since you can see hundreds of metres in both directions as it is a nice straight road.

There is also a far far larger problem which they and previous SU administrations have ignored - drugs on campus. Bouncers at the entrance to the nightclubs are not allowed to search people, and even those caught taking or even dealing drugs inside a venue are not properly dealt with, and soon allowed back into SU premises. They haven’t even dismissed a bartender who was caught with drugs.

They ignore the drugs and violence (as well as under-aged drinking by kids from the local estates) on campus in favour of making ridiculous publicity stunts on road safety and speed limits. If they put even half the effort they have into this stupid campaign over lowering one speed limit into tackling drugs, the problem would be far far lower than it is. This is just part of the reason why I hate student politics.