BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT, THERAPEUTIC COUNSELLORS TO THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

The Prince of Wales has been praised for doing "what any responsible
father would do" by making the wayward Prince Harry visit a drugs
rehabilitation clinic to see the effects of addiction. In truth, if
every middle-class parent whose child had drunk some cider and smoked
a little cannabis did the same as Prince Charles, there would be
little room left in rehab for the recovering heroin addicts at whom
the Hooray Harrys and Harriets are supposed to gawp. Sunday's papers
were full of mock-horror "Harry's drug shame" stories, with "Prince
sent to clinic" headlines that made it sound as if he had been booked
in for a full course of electric shocks rather than a two-hour
voyeur's tour. But bored rich kids experimenting with cannabis is
about as shocking as the revelation that working-class footballers
with cash and time on their hands can sometimes be found in a bar.

Prince Harry has apparently been discovered drinking under-age,
smoking dope and otherwise misbehaving in his local, the Rattlebone
Inn, and at home at Highgrove. He is also reported to have got blotto
in a club on the Costa del Sol, taunted girls and chucked bottles
around in the posh resort of Rock, Cornwall, and vomited behind
various hedges.

One young woman who encountered Harry's princely charms is quoted in
a tabloid observing: "He is one of the most revolting people I've
ever met." Which one would have thought made him fairly typical of
the affluent young "Trustafarian" crowd.

Much more interesting than Harry's boringly boorish behaviour has
been the reaction to it. "This was a serious matter which was
resolved within the family," said a spokesman for the Prince of
Wales. Well, yes, if the Royal Family now includes the staff and
attendees at the Phoenix House rehabilitation clinic.

"Responsible parenting" might once have meant dealing with your
child's everyday problems. Today it also seems to involve handing
them over to outside experts of one sort or another. Apparently even
the Royal Family no longer trusts itself (or Harry's school, Eton,
traditional rehab centre of the upper classes) to sort things out
without inviting the intervention of the therapeutic State.

Worse, since the News of the World got a whiff of last summer's royal
dope smoking, it has been turned into a moral message for the rest of
us. Tony Blair and an army of experts have agreed that teenagers'
sneaking a drink or a puff are a serious social problem, and that
Prince Charles was absolutely right to call in the professionals.
Alcohol Concern suggests that Prince Harry's experience shows the
crying need for "facilities" for "teenagers who find themselves in a
spot of bother", to "provide them with the sort of help they need to
change course". If they intend re-educating every teen who fits into
that sweeping category, the Dome itself will not be a big enough
rehab clinic to hold them. The overreaction to this silly royal story
can only reinforce the depressing influence of the addiction
industry, with its message that one alcopop or puff of dope can lead
to dependency on harder drinks and drugs. Sunday's reports were full
of dark references to the "slippery slope", and they weren't talking
about the ski run at Klosters. It seems that, kings or commoners, we
are all now looked upon as potential addicts who cannot be trusted
unsupervised to eat, drink, go shopping or have sex without risking
the onset of some dangerous dependency.

Perhaps Harry himself will now start lecturing youngsters about the
dangers of drink and drugs, alongside reformed footballers such as
Tony Adams and Paul Merson. Some traditionalists have complained
about Adams and Merson being sent around schools as cut-out role
models, in preference to more straitlaced players. But repentant
sinners are the preferred preachers of the new therapeutic religion.

Much has changed since the teenage Charles scandalously tried to buy
a cherry brandy in a pub. Still, the Duke of Edinburgh can comfort
himself that some aristocratic traditions remain intact, to judge by
stories of Prince William swearing at photographers whilst out
hunting and Prince Harry calling a French pub manager a "f frog".

Possibly more worrying for the royals is the argument of one leading
chemical dependency expert; that trying to scare Harry away from
drugs would not work if he had a "genetically inherited" tendency
towards addiction. We ordinary mortals might laugh off such
deterministic nonsense. But the Royal Family survives by championing
the hereditary principle. Perhaps those who live by the genes can
perish by the genes.