Wake Up To The Truth

George Galloway, sorry, no, Peter Hitchens writes:

The supposed Portuguese drugs miracle, in which giving up enforcing the law was supposedly followed by peace, love and joy, has ended, as it was bound to do, in squalor, crime and fear. And the endlessly-praised Amsterdam dope experiment, in letting rip despite the law, has been rejected with disgust and regret by many of the people who live there. 

Even the wildly liberal Washington Post has finally seen through all the bilge about Portugal. Thanks to them, I doubt I will again be asked by a drug legaliser or a BBC presenter (often the same thing) ‘What about Portugal?’ Or at least, not if they have any sense. For on July 7 the Post explored modern-day Porto, Portugal’s second city. It described a dismal scene – exactly what drug opponents would have predicted after the abandonment of legal penalties for drug possession.

‘Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city, as people with gaunt, clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips, syringes to veins’ it noted. In a long article illustrated with dispiriting pictures of drug-related squalor on the streets, it described how ‘authorities are sealing off warren-like alleyways with iron bars and fencing in parks to halt the spread of encampments’. The neighbours are scared. And the police (always the last to grasp what is going on) ‘are blaming a spike in the number of people who use drugs for a rise in crime’. Well done, officer.

Supposedly liberal Amsterdam has also had enough. Europe’s semi-official marijuana capital has banned the smoking of dope on the streets of its red-light district. Citizens have had enough of the zombie world which decriminalisation brings: ‘Finally, smoking cannabis is banned in public spaces’, says Diederik Boomsma, an Amsterdam city councillor. ‘This will send an important message to the gormless and feckless who think they can come here on a holiday from morality. Newsflash to all potheads: go giggle elsewhere!’

Meanwhile, evidence piles up (unnoticed by the BBC or indeed most journalists of any kind) of the growing correlation between marijuana use and serious lifelong mental illness. And media largely captured by the Pothead campaign somehow never notice that free democratic Japan and South Korea successfully deter drug abuse by prosecuting possession, just as we once did.

Actual experiments in legal marijuana in North America have been pathetic, embarrassing flops. Drug propagandists always claimed that this move would take drugs out of the hands of criminal gangs. But that simply has not happened. The gangs still flourish, but now do so alongside legal outlets for the timid drug user. Meanwhile greedy, cynical businessmen, much like the human sharks who drove Big Tobacco for decades, are making fat profits from human misery. Immoral politicians are raking in tax revenue from products whose terrible dangers are increasingly obvious.

Politicians, it is true, hardly help the causes they embrace, at least in the public eye. I rejoiced the other day when the Scottish ‘government’ tried to demand that the UK abolished its drug laws. The Edinburgh statelet is perhaps the worst-governed portion of Europe west of the River Bug (it really exists, look it up). If they think something is a good idea, it is pretty sure to be bad. Surely, if the Washington Post can wake up to the truth, we can do the same here? There is not much time.

And:

I think the nations of the West, especially the USA, are tiring of the war in Ukraine. What can it now achieve that has not already been achieved? Russia has been stopped in its tracks. It will be incredibly costly in men and money to do any more.

Even here, where amazingly ill-informed gung-ho politics still dominate the debate, there is a cooling. I think Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s tetchy remarks, suggesting that Kiev has responded to our generosity with weapons and other aid by treating us like an Amazon delivery driver, are a sign of a big change of mood. I doubt Mr Wallace would have spoken about this if everyone in London was happy about the way the war is going. About time too. The West’s Ukraine policy has filled cemeteries with thousands of Ukraine’s best young men and will continue to do so until we recognise the need for a negotiated peace. 

I think all responsible people, in this country, whatever their positions have been so far, must begin to accept that this is not some game that we are cheering on, but a profoundly serious combat in which others are dying, losing their homes or suffering terrible injuries.

Of course, in all wars, the young (in my view often too willingly) respond to their leaders’ calls for sacrifice. Their families struggle to prevent them doing so. But in later years, we all tend to recognise that much of the death and maiming was unnecessary, could have been avoided and could certainly have been ended earlier with no significant disadvantage. I promise you this will be the case in Ukraine as well, unless we reject the all-or-nothing faction’s calls for endless war.

Can we please skip this stage and so save a great deal of needless mourning and pain?