THE CLASS OF '68 SMOKE THEIR DOPE AS THE POOR GO TO HELL

It seems to me that just one ruined life is too high a price to pay
for our weak drug laws.

What valuable thing would we lose if cannabis were driven out of our
society for ever?

Dope has wrecked tens of thousands of lives and will wreck millions
more - those of its users and of their families - if we do not find
the resolve to fight it.

A whole generation sniggers smugly about this issue and refuses to
take it seriously.

It is this generation that yelped and snarled with selfish outrage
when the Government at last showed some signs of doing the one thing
that will actually work if only we try it - threatening to punish
those who use cannabis. Fear works.

I wonder just how many civil servants, BBC and Guardian journalists,
"respected academics" and politicians are concealing serious current
drug habits from us.

Given the condescending tone of these people towards anti-cannabis
spokesmen during the past week, I think BBC presenters especially
should be asked outright on air if they use illegal drugs, or allow
their children to do so, if only so that we can enjoy the awkward
pauses that follow.

So they have promoted ways of behaviour, sexual rules and a drug
culture that were bad enough on the college lawns of Oxford and
Cambridge in 1968, and that are plain disastrous among the dead
mattresses and burned-out cars on the sink estates of post-industrial Britain.

But rather than give up their delights, they are content to see the
poor go to hell.

Their one line of defence is that drink and tobacco are just as bad,
and they're legal.

Well, I'm more than happy to use the criminal law against these
things, too. In fact, we already do, rather effectively - as the
drink-driving laws and the tightening ban on public smoking show.

If we could see just half a dozen rock stars, rock brats, BBC
presenters and politicians doing time for cannabis possession, then I
think I can guarantee you a satisfying drop in cannabis use, and a
general improvement in the mental health of the nation.

All we need to do now is dissolve the wretched Association of Chief
Police Officers, those liberal friends of crime, and enforce the law
of the land.