WHY WE HAVE TO FIGHT THE LEGALISERS

Every father must dread the arrest of his teenage son for dealing in drugs.
When, however, a father is a senior Cabinet Ministers in a government which
has said it will not countenance softening the law against drugs, but is
under intense pressure from its own supporters to bring that about, the
shame and embarrassment of the father must be almost unbearable.

A word of sympathy is in order for the Minister faced with the duty of
taking his own son to the police station to make a confession.

The incident should not deflect the Government from its admirable resolve
not to give in to the legalisation lobby. That lobby will use the fact
that a Cabinet Minister's son deals in drugs to argue that the fight
against drugs is already lost: the only choice left now is the
unconditional surrender. If middle classes and underclass are united in
their consumption of illegal drugs, the argument in favour of
decriminalisation they will say is irresistible.

But the reasoning is spurious and should not be heeded. Our society has
slid down quite enough slippery slopes already.

It is alleged that cannabis is virtually harmless. This is not so.
Yesterday alone, I saw two patients, one of whom became temporarily
deranged under the influence of cannabis and tried to kill himself with an
overdose, and another who, also under the influence of cannabis, put his
hand through a window, deliberately sawed at his wrist with the broken
glass, and refused all treatment.

When cannabis is as widely used as alcohol, it is highly probable that the
harm it causes will be found to be very considerable indeed. By then it
will be too late to do anything about it.

It is argued that the criminality associated with drugtaking is a
consequence not of the drugs themselves, but of their prohibition. This is
a little like arguing that the real cause of theft and burglary is private
property.. If nobody owned anything, nobody could steal anything. And I
am not at all sure that the drugdealers whom I daily encounter in prison
would turn their minds to landscape gardening or helping old ladies cross
the road if the prohibition of drugs were removed.

So longs as the sale of any drug were illegal to any group of people they
would push it. No one has suggested drugs should be made freely available
to children, for example. The dealers would therefore target them
immediately.

Holland is one of the most crimeridden countries in Europe despite its
comparatively liberal drug laws. The famous coffeeshops of Amsterdam,
where cannabis is freely available, have done nothing to reduce the crime
rate.

It isn't even true that if drugs were legalised, and obtainable more or
less as alcohol is now, the interference of the authorities in our lives
would be reduced on the contrary, the powers of the state and other
authorities over us would have to increase drastically.

The fact is that the consumption of drugs (including alcohol) is influenced
by price and ease of availability. This is certainly true of alcohol, and
there is no reason to suppose that it would be different for cocaine,
amphetamines, heroin and cannabis if we could buy them as we buy chocolate.

For the criminality associated with drugtaking to decrease, drugs would
have to be cheap; but if they were cheap, enormous quantities of them would
be taken. Those in jobs which could not be performed safely under the
influence of such drugs would have to submit themselves constantly to
tests. Police powers would be drastically increased, not reduced.

It isn't even true that if you give addicts their drug free of charge, they
stop committing crimes. A quarter of Glaswegians prescribed methodone are
arrested every year, and threefifths of them are sentenced to prison.
Many of them use the Methadone they have been given to fund the purchase of
drugs they prefer by selling their prescription to others. Society ends up
with two addicts for the price of one, as well as equal and greater levels
of crime.

Legalisation of drugs is yet another plank in the platform of those who
think that the good society is the one in which everyone pursues his own
pleasure in his own way, regardless of the consequences to others. But
egotistical hedonism not only makes for an unpleasant society (people who
play their music very loudly just because they like it that way do not make
good neighbours), but is deeply unsatisfying to the But egotistical
hedonists themselves. Show me a habitual taker of drugs, and I will show
you an unhappy and unfulfilled man. The freedom to take drugs is simply
not worth having.

The vast majority of parents do not want their children to take drugs. The
likelihood of their children doing so would be enormously increased by
legalisation, for despite its failures, prohibition even when
incompetently and halfheartedly enforced, as it is at present does
reduce the quantities of drugs taken.

The Government should not listen to the sirensong of the legalisers. They
wish for a society with no restraints on personal conduct or in the search
for pleasure. But the pleasures of drugs are trivial and the harms
substantial. Far from legalising their consumption, we should show that we
are serious about reducing it. Our efforts are feeble, and if the police
now agree with the legalisers, as largely they do, it is because they are
defeatists, not only about drugs, but about all crime whatsoever.