A COCKTAIL OF DOUBLE STANDARDS, MR STRAW

What is Jack Straw about?

Alcohol is Britain's most lethal and socially disruptive drug. Each year
33,000 people die from its effects.

One in four acute hospital beds and one in six accident admissions are
alcohol-related. Half of all murders and 500 road deaths are caused by
drunks.

Alcoholic drink pollutes Britain's football reputation, menaces its air
safety and contributes to 90 per cent of public order offences. It is the
pestilence of our age.

Does any substance so merit the full sanction of the State? Is any in more
need of "message" politics?

Was prohibition ever more justified?

Hold on old chap, protests our bonhomous Home Secretary, that is all rather
over the top. We should put such sober thoughts behind us, raise a glass,
have one on him and for the road. Are we not all liberals together?

The Government wants "greater freedom for people to enjoy themselves". It
welcomes the happy pub and the jolly brewer.

Nor does it forget the family.

The family that topes together copes together, and with luck votes together.

The Home Secretary wants longer pub hours.

He wants to liberalise access to drink. Bring the little ones into the pub,
he cries.

Reduce the drinking age from 18 to 16 when adults and food are present. New
Labour is for intelligent drinking.

That is the way to cut abuse.

Nor does the Opposition disagree.

The old licensing laws are "archaic", responds the Shadow Cabinet. Put
tougher controls on noisy pubs and troublesome premises, yes, but every true
Briton likes a good drink.

Middle England is Merrie England. Nobody is in favour of closing time. As
the Tory, Eric Forth, pointed out in the Commons on Monday, the Europeans
have more liberal licensing laws yet less drunkenness. There must be a
lesson there. "If you want to model proposals on the continental
experience," he said, "I warmly welcome them."

The signal is clear.

The party of Bacchus joins the party of Dionysus. There is to be no
sanctimonious nonsense about "sending signals" or "giving messages" to the
young on alcohol. People should be allowed to regulate their own drinking,
provided that they do not offend others.

If they want to get plastered, Government will not stand fussily in their
way. Britain is a grown-up society.

On this topic at least, nanny is on holiday.

I agree with every word of this. With a splice in his mainbrace and April in
the air, our Home Secretary is a most sensible, indeed amiable, Dr Jekyll.
But what a change from two weeks ago. What a change from the Jack Hyde of
March.

Two weeks ago, Mr Straw confronted another archaic law regulating the
private and social behaviour of the British people. It was the Police
Foundation's Runciman report (in which I declare an interest) on the Misuse
of Drugs Act 1971. The Home Secretary screamed and cursed and tore it up.
The report had suggested that the use of cannabis should no longer be an
imprisonable offence and that drug classification be related more closely to
harm. For instance, heroin should not be in the same class as an Ecstasy
pill.

The Runciman report did not advocate legalisation or even the Dutch
licensing of cannabis supply.

Its 80 recommendations could hardly have been milder, leaving Britain with
still one of the most draconian drugs regimes in Europe. Without even
reading the report, Downing Street rejected it out of hand, reportedly
terrified at what the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph might say if anything
short of clear rejection were contemplated. Mo Mowlam, the drugs policy
minister, was silenced.

There would be no change in the law. The Government retreated into total
funk. The spectacle was pathetic.

What happened next was almost hilarious.

The courtiers had no sooner congratulated themselves for outflanking the
right-wing press than the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph played a cruel
trick on Alastair Campbell and Mr Straw. They both welcomed Runciman, the
Telegraph even suggesting it was not radical enough.

A MORI poll showed a majority in all ages advocating that cannabis should be
legalised.

Most held that Mr Straw's favoured alcohol was a far greater menace to
society.

Ministers panicked again.

Having misread "Middle England", Mr Straw rushed an article into the News of
the World "welcoming" Runciman and even accepting that "there is a coherent
argument in favour of legalising cannabis", which would "not necessarily
increase addiction to hard drugs". On the other hand, he still could not
bring himself to budge. In his view, the Misuse of Drugs Act "works in a
pretty sensible way".

Anyone who believes that has not visited a Leeds housing estate on a
Saturday night.

British addiction to hard drugs grows by the month.

A DrugScope survey suggested last week that the average age of heroin first
use in Britain, at 15, is now the lowest in Europe, the single most
appalling measure of the Government's loss of control.

Despite all the efforts of Mr Straw's czars, customs officers and police,
street prices are falling and supply is plentiful.

Addiction is spreading from cities to villages.

While cannabis and Ecstasy use among the young may be levelling off - at
still the highest rate anywhere - heroin and crack are not. Consumption is
unlicensed, unregulated and ubiquitous. The Government's only response is to
proclaim yet another "strategy".

There is no way that the hard drugs epidemic can be tackled in a framework
of criminal sanction, least of all when the authorities are totally obsessed
with cannabis.

MPs on Monday argued that, on the Continent, realistic drink licensing has
meant lower drink consumption. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, also have more
realistic drugs laws than Britain - and lower drug consumption. Can these
fools not see the connection? Is Mr Straw too terrified of the answer even
to face the question?

Come back old Labour, the party of social reform.

Every sentence in Jack Straw's Commons statement about alcohol could have
been said of cannabis.

Every argument, every nuance, every bad-taste joke, applies.

On alcohol he was clear: "License, regulate and let live." On petty,
unenforceable rules he was admirable: abolish them. He was excellent in
advocating a suitable "context" for drinking, to lessen the violent
consequences of alcohol abuse.

Most sensible of all, he wanted to re-empower neighbourhoods to control the
nuisance of drunkenness. What is acceptable privately may not be acceptable
in public.

Regulating an evil is better than trying, and failing, to ban it.

This week saw Britain's political community reacting to the use and abuse of
alcohol with maturity and common sense.

Why can it do this with drink yet not with drugs?

Muslims remain baffled that Europeans ban cannabis yet gorge themselves on
alcohol, while Muslims use cannabis extensively yet regard alcohol as the
Devil's brew. Our handling of these escapist substances is not rational.

It is culturally reactionary. Alcohol circulates freely in certain Arab
circles, as cannabis and cocaine do increasingly in the West. But the old
taboos hold fast, even beyond the time when public opinion is ready to break
them. Ministers seem to think they can "signal" to the young that cannabis
is bad and alcohol good. They cannot.

They are mere slaves to an outdated cultural gene.

Last December Mr Straw struggled to establish his libertarian credentials by
writing that "ordinary people" should be free to enjoy themselves according
to their own lights. "We need modern laws," he said that would "allow people
to enjoy their leisure as they wish, provided this does not disturb others."
He wanted to make it easier for people, young and old to get a drink when
they wanted.

He was right.

Yet when young people want to smoke cannabis he seeks to arrest them. When
they get drunk he smiles and cracks a joke about "hitting the streets and
sometimes each other". When they get high he screams "Go to jail!" This is
not joined-up government or joined-up anything.

It is policy by lurch and panic.

Every week this country's stupid drug laws remain unreformed, they kill
young people.

With the possible exception of traffic accidents, there is no area of public
policy in which death is greeted with such complacency. If the Licensing Act
can be reformed on a joke and a prayer, so can the Misuse of Drugs Act.

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