The Myth Of A War On Drugs

We are persistently informed, by members of the political and media establishment, that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. One has to ask though, when was this supposed war actually fought?

This question cannot be answered because, in truth, we have never fought such a battle. If only we had. Instead, we have been sold a myth – a lie if you will – about a supposedly dogged pursuit of drugs, their users and suppliers by the various arms of the state. The reality is sadly rather different.

In response to my above assertion of there never having been a war on drugs, Joshua Lachovic wrote on his blog:

And you haven’t noticed the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed that the global prohibition kills thousands each year? You haven’t heard practically every politician of the past thirty years refer in some way to the ‘war on the drugs’? You haven’t heard any policeman who refers to the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed the £1.5bn that the UK spends yearly on the war? Nor have you noticed the time spent by every police force in the country trying to fight this war on drugs?

All the while, there are still drug users (as there will forever be), people still die because of drugs and people’s lives are still ruined because of drugs. Relaxing the enforcement and governing of banned substances? I suppose you hadn’t noticed mephedrone be criminalised because of media hysteria last year. I suppose you hadn’t noticed magic mushrooms be criminalised earlier this decade. Nor had you noticed that with a police force such as the one in Sussex, over the past decade crime has fallen, while drug crime has increased. To imply that we aren’t fighting a war on drugs is frankly naive, to say the very least.

Unfortunately for poor Joshua, he makes a number of glaring errors in his argument. To begin with, what he calls the ‘global prohibition’ of drugs (which doesn’t exist, because it is not prohibition) does not kill thousands each year. Drugs kill people; ‘prohibition’ does not.

Click here to continue reading the article…

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.

Click here to continue reading the article…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance

I missed yesterday’s announcement that former Telegraph and ConHome writer, Jonathan Isaby had been appointed Political Director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

The Conservative party and the Taxpayers’ Alliance have always had a very close relationship. The appointment of Isaby as Political Director, apparently responsible for ‘building links with Ministers, MPs and MEPs’, means the partnership will become cosier still.

This appointment brings to mind an occasion in 2006 when I visited Conservative Central Office at its former residence in Victoria Street. During the meeting, our group were informed by Mark Clarke, who was then the pompous Chairman of Conservative Future, and Ian Oakley, at the time a Conservative candidate in Watford, that the newly formed Taxpayers’ Alliance were simply a front organisation set up by the Tories to attack Labour on tax.

The ‘brilliant idea’, so we were told, was to create a separate organisation that could attack Blair and Brown on economic issues, meaning the Labour party, BBC and print media couldn’t just dismiss the complaints as being irrelevant because they had come from the Conservatives.

I even recall mention of how the organisation was to be funded by existing donors to the Tory party and indirectly, the Conservative party itself. At the time I wrote a blog entry on my website making note of a few of these remarks on the TPA, and criticised Mark Clarke and Ian Oakley for being slimy and insincere. Not long afterwards Clarke contacted me by email to ask that I withdraw the article, not, so he said, due to the personal criticism, but for revealing matters about the workings of the TPA at a private meeting in CCHQ. Naturally I refused, and that was the end of the matter as far as I saw it. Furthermore, in subsequent years my observations on the disgraceful Ian Oakley were rather vindicated by events.

Thus, from its inception, the Taxpayers’ Alliance existed as a Conservative sanctioned group used to indirectly assault the Labour administration over their economic incompetence, high tax policies and runaway spending habits. Of course, now that Labour are no longer in office and the Tories (and Lib Dims) have replaced them, the situation has somewhat changed.

Click here to continue reading the article…

Pure Fantasy

In recent weeks the Daily Express among others has speculated that Government ministers are becoming ‘more eurosceptic’ and now want the UK to quit the EU. So, what do we make of such announcements?

In light of the recent media speculation, John Gill on the Freedom Association’s website asks whether the Conservative party have rediscovered euroscepticism? He says:

The Daily Express refers to these revelations as a ‘surge in anti-Brussels feeling within the Government’; and, whilst I have my reservations as to how accurate these reports are, it is encouraging nonetheless that even arch Cameroons, such as Letwin and Hilton, are beginning to see just how damaging an institution the EU is.

Whilst I won’t hold my breath that this will happen any time soon, I am confident that sooner, rather than later, the Tories will have to rediscover euroscepticism to stand any chance of keeping up with public opinion.

While John says he won’t hold his breath at this happening, even to believe that it could happen is of course wishful thinking. In fact it is so wishful as to be almost pure fantasy, since you cannot rediscover something if you had never discovered it in the first place – the Tories never having been a ‘eurosceptic’ or anti-EU party.

Eurosceptic as a definition is pretty much meaningless these days, which could best be summed up as ‘supports the EU but pretends not to’. We’ve had three decades to gaze upon the workings of the European Union and to understand it for what it really is. This is very much a black and white issue. You either do not agree with the European Project and wish to leave it, or you support it and wish to remain within it. There is no in-between, wishy-washy, middle ground. The EU cannot be reformed or changing from within, in part because there is no overall will to do so from the majority of pro-EU member states and even if there were then no mechanisms to bring about such ‘reform’ exist. Therefore ‘euroscepticism’ is a ploy to dupe the gullible into voting for so called ‘eurosceptics’ who are politicians who support the EU because they do not wish to leave.

Click here to continue reading the article…