Peter Hitchens writes:
When I failed to worship and flatter Friends actor Matthew Perry live on the BBC, I became hated by large numbers of people. Since he died, those numbers have grown. My crime, before the court of modish public opinion, was to say that he could, if he wished, stop taking the drugs which wrecked his life and eventually killed him. Anti-social media are infested with articles and remarks about how cruel and unfeeling I was. A new Netflix series on Mr Perry's sad life will make this worse. I have now decided to say to his supporters that he might now be alive if he had listened to me.
I do not mean to be hurtful. But the best defence against drugs and drink is human will. That was why I took a deep breath and risked years of loathing and derision. Here's a mild and stately example of the attacks I face. The remnant of the once-mighty Independent newspaper last week proclaimed that my opinions on drugs 'are maddeningly, cruelly wrong'. Well, that's interesting. But wrong in what way? Nice, fashionable views on 'addiction' indulge drug-taking. They seem to me to mean more misery and death.
We have had nearly 60 years of liberal treatment of drugs and drink. The numbers of drug abusers have grown hugely. The mass abuse of painkillers has become an especial problem, which engulfed Mr Perry. Yet the dedicated buffoons responsible for this mistake continue to claim that drug abusers get a hard time from society and the police. No, they don't. It's all rehab, 'diversion', 'treatment' and sympathy. That's what Mr Perry got from his friends - he also spent $7million on rehab. And now he has gone. I am sorry for the loss suffered by his family and friends. Though he was rude and dismissive to me (I am used to that), I rather liked him. He had a sense of humour and a quick wit. He could take it as well as dish it out. If I could have spoken to him away from his Presidential-sized entourage, I think we might have got somewhere.
But let me note these things about 'addiction', the all-purpose excuse for drug abuse of all kinds. I have known many people who have given up cigarettes, which I suspect are among the hardest drugs to abandon. I also recall, in the Fleet Street of 40 years ago, several colleagues who, warned by their doctors that they must act or die, gave up alcohol. Those who ignored these warnings died soon afterwards. During the Vietnam war, 60 years ago, more than 60,000 US soldiers became 'addicted' to heroin. When they got home, all but about 3,000 gave up without difficulty. I'll say it again. Telling people they are powerless to stop poisoning themselves is not a good, kind or generous act. Now you can yell abuse at me again.
There cannot be a “free” market in general, yet not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction. Contrived in the past, that baleful situation is being contrived again today.
We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. No prison sentence should include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And we need Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought to be taught in schools.
Meanwhile, the latest bans on certain categories of pornography, bans that prove the technical possibility of a total ban and categories that boggle the mind of this 49-year-old ex-con, are being vehemently resisted on Twitter by the vociferous transactivist ally, plausible new Telegraph columnist, and practically certain future Conservative Cabinet Minister whatever he may say at 30, Tom Harwood. Pornography is now being legalised in Ukraine to pay for the war. It had been legally prohibited and practically unknown in the Soviet Union, but post-Soviet Russia was flooded with it, to placate the young male population during the larceny of their country by means of the economic “shock therapy” that created today’s oligarchs. “Sex work” of various kinds has always been encouraged when the young men have needed to be stupefied, and it still is. The corporate capitalist pornogrification of our own society is no accident. In welcoming the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, Reform UK has picked its side, the same side as the Green Party on this as on the war.
No comments:
Post a Comment