WORRYING ABOUT DRUGS WHILE THE HOUSE BURNS

The railway service between Swansea and Llanelli is not what it used to be.
So just over two years ago, covering the general election for this paper, I
found myself in a taxi travelling to the latter town, which is (or used to
be) famous for tinplate and rugby. Beside the road was the blackened shell
of a detached house which, in that part of the world, would be occupied by a
headmaster or a bank manager.

"What happened there?" I asked.

"The druggies," the driver replied succinctly. "They took it over and burnt
it down, like."

Whether this unhappy result was brought about by malice or negligence was
not immediately apparent. Clearly one could not expect to acquire money to
buy drugs by incinerating one's abode. Swansea, the driver went on, was
notorious for drugs; in this respect, I learnt later, rivalled only by Llanelli.

As someone who had been brought up ten miles or so north of these towns I
was, I confess, shocked. And yet, why should I have been? I was - still am -
a libertarian in this area as in others. If the youth of South-west Wales
wished to go to hell in a particular way, that was their own affair. That
was my position. This right, however, clearly did not include the freedom to
burn down other people's houses, even though they were unoccupied by their
owners at the time.

Nor was there any reason for me to feel surprised. Edinburgh, Glasgow and
Manchester, to name only a few other drug centres, had also suffered from
extinct industries, high unemployment and the most disastrous piece of
social engineering since the war: the shifting of swathes of the population
en bloc to high towers or dismal estates.

This was carried out under a principle which Lady Porter would have
understood: to keep the Labour vote intact. Traditionally the party believed
in integrated education and segregated housing. Even Anthony Crosland did
not realise that if Labour supported segregated housing it would end up with
segregated education as well. There was no reason why South-west Wales
should have been insulated from developments which had affected the rest of
the country in the last 40 years.

Over 20 of those years ago I was at a dinner party in one of the more
expensive areas of South London. Among those present were a well-known
author, a much-admired woman cartoonist and at least three columnists -
there may have been more - from the broadsheet press. At the coffee stage
the hostess produced what looked like a cigarette, lit it, took a few puffs
and passed it to her neighbour on her left, for all the world as if it had
been port in the combination room. She did likewise and passed it to me. I
passed it on unpuffed with as much disdain, I like to think, as Dame Edith
Evans would have displayed.

I may say that I do not believe in always obeying the law as an abstract
principle. For instance, I frequently neglect to fasten my seatbelt on short
journeys. We shall all resist Mr Jack Straw's imminent Slaughter of the
Firstborn Act. I refused to puff cannabis because of the absurd ritual of

the proceedings and, not least, because I had no more wish to puff someone
else's cigarette than to share her toothbrush. I should have preferred a
small glass of armagnac and a large cigar, neither on offer at that point.

This was an occasion of the utmost respectability, with no loose talk, lewd
jokes or, as far as I remember, jokes of any description. It was a long way
from the burnt-out house on the Llanelli road. "Everything's got a moral, if
only you can find it," says the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland. The moral
here is not that the druggies of Swansea have been set a bad example by the
dinner parties of South London. Nor is it that the Swansea boys would have
started with cannabis before progressing to more powerful substances and a
promising career as house-burners. The moral is that the use of drugs is now
so widespread that the criminal law is an unapt instrument to suppress their
use, even if that is the correct course. Indeed, it can be argued that the
law is not only ineffective but also undemocratic. For if enough people show
daily that they wish to conduct their lives in a certain way, why should the
state use its coercive powers to stop them?

This is different from the libertarian argument. Liberty and democracy often
conflict, as I once explained to Dr Rhodes Boyson when he claimed to believe
in both. What, I asked, would be his attitude if, by a majority of six to
four, the 10 people on a desert island decided that everyone should wear
white shirts (fortunately saved from the shipwreck) on Sundays? The good
doctor thought for a moment and pronounced that white shirts would indeed
have to be worn. I feel sure Mr Tony Blair would have agreed, on
communitarian rather than on religious grounds. I said I was on the side of
the minority.

In this case the libertarian argument was clear enough. It is not always so.
I dislike the bossyboots character of the present administration. But I can
recognise that many of the arguments of J S Mill and his more dogmatic
adherents in the United States today are plausible only on the assumption
that society consists solely of middle-aged bachelors, in good health and
the possession of adequate incomes. And yet, roughly two-thirds of western
societies are dependants of one sort or another.

Besides, actions which clearly affect other people adversely, and which
Millite liberalism says can legitimately be punished or discouraged, are not
in practice so treated. One example is marital infidelity, the cause of
untold misery to helpless children. Another is excessive drinking, the cause
of more violence, domestic and public, than all the drug-taking in the land.

I do not conclude from this either that illicit sexual intercourse should be
made a crime or that drunkenness should be transformed into a more
comprehensive offence that it is already. I conclude rather that taking
drugs should not be a crime either. The people who burnt the house should be
caught and, if found guilty, punished, if this has not happened already: but
for burning the house rather than for taking drugs. They cause crime because
criminality is inherent in the activity

of taking them. So to say they cause crime is tautologous. But they do so
also because people commit crimes to finance their expensive habit. If they
were part of a free market they would be cheaper. Accordingly the final
criminal element, the dealers, would disappear, their business taken over by
Boots the Chemist.

Those who think as I do should beware of an argument to which shifty
liberals have become attached. It is called "setting a standard". It was
much used of the anti-racist laws of the 1960s. Liberals were not prepared
to admit frankly that freedom was being restricted, in however worthy a
cause. Instead they claimed that the law was setting a standard. But it is
not the function of the criminal law to set standards. It is to punish acts
or omissions which are held to harm society. As the Dallaglio affair has
shown, the application of the criminal law to drugs causes more misery to
individuals, and more damage to society, than the drugs cause themselves. As
it is, we are as foolishly obsessed with drugs as a previous age was with
heresy.