Organised Crime

Peter Hitchens writes:

Here’s how to influence Government policy: Make a career out of being coarse and crude; take illegal drugs, moan that it wasn’t your fault and demand sympathy for your selfish crime; get some tattoos. Next, wear a cowboy hat and rip a lot of holes in your shirt (an aide can rip them for you if you’re too busy). Then saunter into a Parliamentary Committee and casually mock its members, while saying nothing of interest or importance. The MPs will pay you slavish attention, and the media – especially those bits of it who claim to be uninterested in celebrity – will give you a huge platform.

I sat behind the alleged comedian Russell Brand on Tuesday as he was giving his ‘evidence’ to the Home Affairs Select Committee. I was on next and, unlike him, I had something new and important to say. I have spent the past 18 months researching and writing a book (out later this year) on the unofficial but near-total legalisation of drugs in Britain since 1971. But in our superficial culture, it was Mr Brand (author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2) who featured in the newspapers and on the BBC (which did grant me a few seconds of airtime, it is true). And I’ll be surprised if the alleged comedian’s views don’t prevail when the Select Committee eventually reports later this year.

Our establishment seem determined to believe various fictions about drugs. They claim there’s stern ‘prohibition’ when most people arrested for cannabis possession are let off without any penalty or criminal record, and when Pete Doherty can walk into a courtroom with heroin actually in his pockets and walk out a free man. And, like Mr Brand, they claim that drug ‘addicts’ are cruelly punished  by the system, when in fact these  deliberate, selfish, pleasure-seeking criminals are idiotically treated as if they were ill. Then, to save the 'addicts' from having to steal to pay for their sordid pleasure, the State steals £300million each year from taxpayers to give them methadone, so that they can stupefy themselves legally at your expense and mine.

That’s what I call organised crime.