HEROES SHOULD BE REAL

Puritanism About Drugs Makes No Sense To Today's Chemical Generation, Says
Alastair Mckay

WHICH WORLD is it that the drugs puritans inhabit? Days after Tom Parker
Bowles is revealed as an alleged drug dealer, comes Lawrence Dallaglio,
resigning as England rugby captain after reportedly confessing two things
which have thrown his whole future into doubt. He is said to have admitted
that he and other members of the British Lions team took ecstasy and
cocaine at a party during the tour, and, more surprisingly, he is said to
have boasted that he made "big, big money" from drug-dealing before taking
up rugby.

A week ago, Parker Bowles, a film publicist whose misfortune it was to be
the son of the lover of the Prince of Wales, was exposed as a drug taker
after he was seen taking cocaine at a party. According to the News of the
World, Parker Bowles also offered to supply drugs to a woman. Further
reports said he was cautioned for possession of cannabis and ecstasy while
he was a student at Oxford.

As news of the weird goes, neither of the above stories is
earth-shattering. In fact, most people who have left their homes in the
last 30 years will be aware that drug use is widespread in society. It does
not seem surprising, therefore, to discover that it goes on in the more
privileged corners of society, where people have money to burn and time to
burn it.

The last generation - the same young people who are often referred to as
the Chemical Generation - were taught to Just Say No with the same
insistence that their predecessors were encouraged to follow the Green
Cross Code or to "Clunk Click Every Trip". And much good it did them. The
War on Drugs is a battle fought with slogans against an unseen enemy. It is
unwinnable, and is waged for reasons which are more political than
practical. Politicians need enemies and in a cynical world fear is easier
to conjure than hope. Yet, after at least a decade of War, no-one is
arguing that drug use is in decline. Fewer still are calling for society's
real killer drugs, tobacco and alcohol, to be outlawed. Brand-name legal
drugs which alter the state of their users in new and dramatic ways - see
Viagra and Prozac - are fetishised.

We are all aware that illegal drugs are everywhere. So why the outrage?
Well, not because of the drugs, but because of the people who took them.
Parker Bowles is a friend of Prince William, who was said to be a frequent
guest at family parties. The implication of this, which we are encouraged
to find shocking, is that the innocent William may be led astray, though it
is hard to imagine that the social habits of the Cannes Film Festival are
hugely removed from those which he would have witnessed around his mother
in the yacht-hopping, Eurotrash phase she had embarked on immediately prior
to her death.

Dallaglio's case is simpler. He is a sportsman. Sport is a controlled
environment with its own rules. It is played in schools as a way of
encouraging moral fibre: all that stuff about grit, application, fair play
and team spirit. (We will ignore, for a moment, the homophobia, sexism and
alcoholic gigantism which make the oval ball game such beezer fun.) So, the
argument goes, sport and drugs do not mix, except when the drug-users
escape detection, which is most of the time, probably.

But worse, Dallaglio is - was - the captain of his country. He is,
therefore, supposed to set an example to the young. He is supposed to show
how to navigate through the temptations of the modern world. He is, in a
phrase that is often-spouted but never examined, a role model.

A what? The role model, like political correctness, is an American concept
which has been imported and misapplied. The notion comes from the black
civil rights movement. The argument was that the majority (white) culture
misrepresented the lifestyle of the minority (black) culture. The heroes of
white culture, John Wayne and Elvis, say, were not relevant to the
experiences of black children. Worse, the only black people they would see
on television and in films would be drug dealers and criminals, society's
losers. Young blacks would learn that losing was all they had to look
forward to. One of the areas where black people could overcome the hurdles
of institutionalised racism was athletics, where necessity required that
skill and application be rewarded. It is a short hop from this point to
Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan, a small stumble to Mike Tyson.

So, the role model came to Britain. Many of the same circumstances apply.
Racial minorities may need as much as encouragement as they do in the US.
So, too, may working-class people who learn early on that the sound of
their voices, the language they speak, is a barrier to success. But the
notion that all in society require celebrities to teach them how to behave
is as insulting as it is depressing.

Pop stars, we know, take drugs. It is in the job description. Yet still,
there is choreographed harrumphing when a dumb chump such as Gary Barlow
admits to dabbling. He will, we are led to believe, lead the kids, pied
piper-like, to oblivion. Robbie Fowler, the complex and intelligent
Liverpool footballer, is fined for sniffing a white line on a football
pitch, a gesture designed to mock the taunts of the fans who accused him of
taking drugs; a gesture which could only be understood by those who were
versed in drug lore.

And now Dallaglio. If he has broken the law, he should pay for that.
Otherwise, so what? Do we not trust our children to make informed decisions
about how to lead their lives based on the available evidence? Apparently
not. Worse: in disapproving so loudly about the drug abuse of the rich and
famous we advertise the lifestyle and make drug use a symbol of success.

There is a simpler way through all of this. We can recognise that our
celebrities are not special. They are just famous, a dysfunction which
brings with it pressures which are far from typical. There is nothing we or
our children need to learn from the strange ways they behave - except,
perhaps, that fame is not such a great state if its inhabitants feel the
need to escape it so regularly.

Role models, if we must have them, should be closer to hand. They should be
friends, family, teachers. They should be real people who can talk and
listen. Really, heroism is an intimate thing.