But Who Will Admit That Now?

Peter Hitchens writes:

How odd to recall what we were told in the 1960s, that the laws against pornography were unhealthy and repressive, and that if it was brought into the open, a new age of wholesomeness and sexual health would begin. 

Those who tried to object to this, such as poor old Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse, were unkindly mocked and accused of having dirty minds themselves.

Well, now we see the sort of cruel, inhuman muck about sex that has crept into the minds of schoolchildren, it looks to me very much as if Lord Longford and Mrs Whitehouse were right, and all the fashionable lawyers, authors, academics and journalists who jeered at them were seriously wrong. 

We’d all be better off if you still had to go to Paris to buy that embarrassingly ridiculous book Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and if the avalanche of porn that came after that book’s uncensored publication had been prevented.

But who will admit that now? 

And:

Talk about missing the point.

Last week’s Channel 4 documentary series 24 Hours In Police Custody told the story of the ill-named Justice McCann, 23, now serving a 22-year prison sentence for attempted murder.

McCann shot and badly wounded a young Pole, Jakub, more or less ruining his life. The crime was completely random and pointless, even by the low standards of a robber and drug-abuser such as McCann. 

The programme showed the police catching McCann and proving he had done the shooting. There was a fair amount of charging about in vans, with guns, and shouting ‘Armed police!’ like on Line Of Duty, and a bit of psychobabble.

But the key point about McCann, that he had been smoking marijuana since he was eight, and still did so every day, seemed to go straight past the entire criminal justice system and the makers of the programme.

If the police and courts enforced the laws against marijuana possession, something they seem to have forgotten is illegal, a huge amount of crazy violence of this kind (and incurable mental illness) would be avoided.

See the website Attacker Smoked Cannabis, compiled by the excellent Ross Grainger, and marvel at just how many insane, brutal crimes are carried out by long-term users of this horrible drug – now on the verge of becoming legal.