Wednesday, 24 March 2010


England's green and pleasant land

WEDNESDAY, 24TH MARCH 2010

Reading about the government drug adviser’s alarm about the legal drug mephedrone, or ‘miaow’, which has so far killed three young people, and his call for it to be made illegal, I am struck by the reaction from a number of quarters which ranges from the logically challenged to the downright irresponsible. In the latter camp was an astonishing article in the Daily Telegraph by a doctor who, describing how he took the stuff just to see what effect it had, described it in such a lyrical way as to positively invite young people to try it. It was hard to say who was more irresponsible – the doctor for writing this or the Telegraph for publishing it.

A rather more appropriate reaction was described by Kathy Gyngell on the Centre for Policy Studies blog:

My friend had not even heard of ‘miaow’ or mephedrone when the head of her children’s leading London day school decided to take the law into his own hands, she told me when the tragic mephedrone deaths hit the press last week. He was not prepared to wait on the government. At a PTA meeting before Christmas he had informed her and every other parent in no uncertain terms of this new and dangerous drug, one that went under several names and guises. It was legal, cheap and freely available, he warned them; they must warn their children and impress on them how dangerous it was. For his part he had already explained to the school, that its legality notwithstanding, any of them found with it on them would be expelled forthwith.

Such robustness is rare. More predictable ws the reaction from the usual suspects in the media who whinged that making mephedrone illegal would do nothing to counter the problem because, as we all know, young people are drawn to take a drug precisely because it is forbidden – the habitual argument of the drug legalisers. But if there is one outstandingly obvious point about mephedrone, it is that it has become the fashionable drug of choice and a galloping menace even though it is legal -- indeed, the fact that it is legal and thus readily available makes it easier for people to obtain it.

This is not rocket science.

Legalisation, or the social acceptance of currently illegal drugs, means that many more people will use them than if they are illegal. That is the point not just of drugs law but of law, full stop. It demarcates the social boundaries of acceptability (and don’t give me that rubbish about illegality creating black markets and crime: these will always exist around whether or not they are illegal). If an illegal activity or substance is made legal, that sends the most powerful signal that society gives it a green light.

There has been a systematic campaign to turn the social unacceptability of illegal drug use into acceptance on the grounds that all sophisticated people know it’s not the drugs but the law that is the problem. It is that attitude which has created the climate in which young people are going from one drug to another and are adding to the repertoire of socially lethal substances. And that attitude has now gone far deeper than might be imagined.

I recently went to see the hit play Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth at the Apollo theatre in London. This play has received ecstatic reviews for the portrayal by Mark Rylance of the central character, Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, a misfit who is about to be evicted from his caravan in leafy Wiltshire by the local council which regards his abode as an illegal public nuisance. We are invited to cheer Byron on as the epitome of the individual pitted against the state, the little man against the forces of impersonal and heartless bureaucracy, standing up for freedom and independence and the human spirit and all that kind of stuff against the soulless, robotic pen-pushers who would snuff it all out.  And cheer him on the audience certainly does. As Paul Taylor put it in the Independent:

Rylance makes you root fiercely for this unorthodox, instantly iconic hero as he pounds the drum and invokes at the end. The other noise you hear is the sound of the audience’s hearts beating in fervent response.

But the point about Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron is that he is a drug dealer; not only that, he dishes out drugs and alcohol (and maybe under-age sex too) to children who are drawn to his caravan like moths to a flame. And the audience, the solidly middle-class west end theatreland audience, roar him on. How they laugh when he swigs half a pint of vodka laced with speed! How they chuckle when children snort up cocaine outside his van! How they titter when the young teenage Vicky Pollard clone, who is racketing from one under-age sexual encounter to another, is taunted as a slapper! How they scorn the tedious council bureaucrats with their fluorescent jackets and their clipboards who come to do something as inimical to human flourishing as enforcing the law! How droll it is to see social norms being trashed in this way! And thedialogue, all three interminable acts of it, is a constant stream of profanities and vulgarities.  

To me, the really astounding performance was not Ryland’s but that of the audience – who were cheering on this wrecker of children’s lives and innocencein sympathetic recognition of and identification with a loser who is giving the finger to the law.

Is it any wonder, given such debasement of Britain, that yet another lethal drug has become an accepted part of the landscape?