The Bankruptcy Of Harm Reduction
Despite all else that is going on in the world, we once again return to the important issue of illegal drugs, with news that Louise Mensch (formerly Bagshawe) had ‘probably’ taken drugs while working for record company EMI – though rather tellingly she just can’t quite remember.
We were also graced with an article, currently behind the pay-wall of yesterday’s Times newspaper, by Anushka Asthana (who she?) claiming:
The bankruptcy of prohibition is becoming ever more apparent as it fails to keep up with the plethora of ‘legal highs’. As one is banned, ten more emerge. There will be no need to go to dark alleys in Brixton soon: the internet will offer people everything they want. Some form of legalisation – in which users are no longer criminalised but the market is regulated – is inevitable for some substances. So we might as well start thinking about how to do it now.
It doesn’t really seem to matter how many times you point out to the likes of Ms Asthana and fellow travellers that Britain has no such manner of prohibition, they just won’t listen. This is because they are attempting to draw comparison between the perfectly winnable battle (if we were to actually fight it) against drugs in Britain with actual prohibition of alcohol in the United States of the 1920s, which was doomed to failure before it even began.
The divide lies between those of us who wish to see the current laws strengthened and enforced, and those who believe users are somehow able to take these drugs more safely. They call it ‘harm reduction’, though it is anything but. Furthermore, Ms Asthana casually repeats that old lie which claims drug users are criminalised by the law, where in fact it is users who criminalise themselves by taking their poison in the first place.
Louise Mensch is one of those rather airily vacant MPs who would be as comfortable in the New Labour party as she is in Cameron’s modern, liberal Conservatives. In fact, in 1996 she was a member of the Labour party, with Peter Hitchens remarking:
No surprise there. Miss Bagshawe has the political grasp of a Teletubby and was – like so many other Cameron fans – a supporter of the Labour Party in 1996.
Having had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting Mrs Mensch in Bournemouth in 2006 (when she was but a mere Bagshawe), I think the description of her by Peter Hitchens, writing on another occasion, rings wonderfully true:
The irresistibly charming thing about Miss Bagshawe, now prospective Conservative candidate for Corby in Northamptonshire, is that – like David Cameron himself, only with less pretence about it – she is clearly only slightly interested in politics, and has a marvellously limited understanding of what it involves. She will, I fear, go very far. A sweet vagueness swirls round all she does, the kind of vagueness that often conceals weapons-grade ambition.
Her extracted partial confession in The Daily Express on her use of banned substances comes as little of surprise. Like David Cameron and the liberal circles that both moved in, taking drugs was seen as just a little bit of harmless, giggly fun. She said:
Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable. Additionally, since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind; we all do idiotic things when young. I am not a very good dancer and must apologise to any and all journalists who were forced to watch me dance that night at Ronnie Scott’s.
Note the rather obvious lack of an actual apology for taking the drugs. Notable too was hold fellow Commons Culture Select Committee member, Tom Watson, was quick to defend her on Newsnight saying he didn’t much care about what she ‘did in nightclubs in the 1990s’.
Interestingly, when I first read the accompanying BBC article last night, I recalled the Watson creature being quoted as claiming to ‘admire her for what she has done’. According to the News Sniffer archives this comment was silently edited out. Now, I wonder why that may have been…
If we were to allow Tom Watson to have his own way then he would try and bring everything back to his precious phone hacking scandal, saying as he did:
What she has effectively done today is give a very big finger to a… journalist who is trying to dig up dirt on her from many years ago, probably because she is involved in exposing the truth about hacking and what went on on our committee.
As is so often the case with modern British politics, the political class can be seen to close ranks to protect one of their own, revealing the truth that they have more in common with one another than the voting public. That little bit of giggly, harmless fun they enjoyed when younger may have done them no harm (or so they like to believe), but in weakening our laws and undermining their enforcement, they condemn thousands of others to suffer an unpleasant, but avoidable fate.
