WE ARE FAR TOO TOLERANT WHEN IT COMES TO VICE AND DRUGS

The Government Plans to Reclassify Cannabis and to Prosecute Men Who
Pay for Sex. It Should Stand Firm Despite Libertarian Jeers

Kingsley Amis once said, truly: 'Nice things are nicer than nasty
things.' On this hangs all morality. It is because we know that some
things are intolerable, and other things are admirable, that we can
talk confidently about violations of human rights, or of a better
society. It is only because we have this knowledge that we can teach
small children to put themselves in other people's shoes, to
sympathise with those who are unfairly treated, or who are suffering,
and so, in turn, they can avoid treating others unfairly or doing
harm. Because we have this knowledge, we can teach children the
elements of morality.

Of course, it can't be denied that, within limits, what is counted as
nice, and what as nasty, may change over time. Our moral standards
are not the same as those of the ancient Greeks or even of the
European Victorians. And among our contemporaries we may come up
against moral standards so different from our own that familiar
distinctions falter. The difference between the nice and nasty seems
to lose its grip in the face of terrorist atrocities.

All the same, if there were not a huge measure of agreement, neither
morality nor law itself could survive. Most actions that are
criminal offences are also morally wrong; and when morality and law
begin to diverge, society is in trouble.

Yet there are aspects of society, absolutely nasty, which appear
unaccountably to be tolerated. Why, for example, does society
tolerate prostitution? Why is the nastiness of buying sex so seldom
noticed? Brothels are treated as a kind of joke, the stock figure of
the madam at the centre. The government's proposal to punish men for
paying for sex has been decried as an assault on civil
liberties. Prostitution is presented as fair exchange, the
commodities, sex and money, desired by the different parties, so the
transaction can end in mutual satisfaction. There has probably never
been a society without prostitution; we are taught indeed that it is
'the oldest profession', so it may be that the worldly are just used
to it; those to whom engaging in it is unimaginable are simply out of
touch with reality. This may be all there is to be said.

But for those who regard consensual sex as one of the nicest of nice
things, prostitution is a corruption, a devaluing. Though it is
consensual, it is so only through the medium of money. No one would
put up with it without being paid. This is far from the bliss of Adam and Eve.

All the same, it seems strange that feminism has had so little effect
on society's tolerance of female prostitution, or on the more general
corruption of sex in such related institutions as
lap-dancing. Feminism, after all, in its heyday, proclaimed that
women should not be used as objects, designed simply to satisfy
men. ( Presumably male prostitution was seen not to much matter,
might be positively encouraged as a distraction. ) But the voice of
feminism in matters of sex is much muted these days, except from a
few die-hards. Perhaps there is no one left in the world except me
and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who thinks prostitution nasty, that
is to say vicious. Or perhaps, as I suspect, feminism was always
partial and incomplete in its demand for the treatment of women as
wholly human, the equal of men. But the most likely explanation is
that, since prostitution is such an ancient profession, it is thought
that the lust of men is simply unconquerable and that feminism,
however rampageous, could never be its match. I would be sorry to
think this was so, but it is, after all, the same defeatism that
makes some Muslim men demand that women hide themselves. Other men
are simply not to be trusted even to look at their wives, nor
themselves to look at other women.

No belief could be more derogatory of men. I wish we could abandon
it: I wish we could say: 'If you can't find consensual sex, try masturbation.'

Defeatism is, I believe, most often the cause of our apparent
tolerance of the nasty. There is, it is true, some vicious
behaviour, generally agreed to be such, that we haven't yet come to
tolerate, and are still trying, with increasing desperation, to
control or eliminate, such as the carrying of knives, and the
senseless slaughter of gang warfare. I sincerely hope that, however
great the difficulties, we shall not come to tolerate this evil. In
the case of this kind of vicious violence we are not likely to hear
that it is only the 'Nanny State' that would suppress it, that people
must be allowed the freedom to choose how they live, and go to hell
their own way. There could be no more powerful illustration of the
fact that there are things we know are evil, and that we do not want
to live in a society where they are allowed to occur.

But there are other evils that we increasingly seem to tolerate,
though we fear them and wish that they did not exist. Take, for
example, the case of drugs. My own attitude, I have to acknowledge,
is deeply influenced by the experience of the 1960s and '70s when I
was headmistress of a school in Oxford, and when drugs were to all
intents and purposes new. Because access to drugs was easy, and yet
their effects both in the short and the long term unknown, it was a
time of genuine panic for me, both as one in charge of a school, and
as a parent.

We could sometimes see the immediate effect of the excessive use of
cannabis, or the other drugs then in fashion, but we did not know in
the least what would happen next, whether cannabis itself ( as turns
out to be the case ) might have long-term consequences, or whether it
would lead inexorably to the use of heroin. Because of this
experience, I still have a fear of drugs that many would find
excessive. The horror may have receded with the ignorance, but fear remains.

One source of fear is that the nature of drugs can change. It used
in the past to be held that cannabis was relatively harmless, and
less obviously damaging to the user than either tobacco or excessive
alcohol. One should be thankful, according to this argument, if
people preferred an occasional joint instead. But that is no longer
so. Cannabis is not what it was. People cannot know the purity or
the strength of the drugs they are taking, so the risks become incalculable.

For my part I have no wish to be more tolerant of drugs, nor do I
wish that, as a society, we should become so. It is defeatism to
give up hope that we may halt the increase in drug use, and the
increase, therefore, of drug-related crime.

Education, nagging and legislation between them have radically
reduced the consumption of tobacco. Perhaps next we can succeed in
reducing thoughtless drinking; and after that, perhaps, the use of
other drugs, damaging as they are not only to the user, but to
society as a whole. Let the Nanny State tell us that such things are
hateful and nasty, and let us, like good children, believe her.