Kettle calling Pot black…
Cannabis has now been downgraded to a Class C drug. This puts it in the same class as some tranquillisers, anabolic steroids, aspirin, buttercup syrup and Preparation H. Why don’t they just make it legal and have done with it? In fact why don’t they legalise all drugs up to and including the big H. If nothing else that should stop Irving Welsh writing another book aimed at the thirtysomething, pseudo-intellectual middleclasses who think reading about a stereotyped view of working-class youth makes them hip, so one good thing would come out of it straight away.
Did you detect a note of sarcasm there? From Moi? I’m serious. Hang on a minute cos its difficult to type while you’re jacking up. There, that’s better. Now that you’ve had your prejudices reinforced you can read on, secure in the knowledge that anyone who’s for the legalisation of drugs is a drug user or would like to be. Sorry to bust your bubble - I don’t. That’s not to say I haven’t. Like a lot of other people, I’ve inhaled. I’ve also popped, swallowed, snorted and spent all night dancing to trance remixes of Pink Floyd - (truly, drugs can make you do some terrible things.) But now I don’t. Why did I try drugs? Why did you have your first glass of alcohol. “But it’s not the same” cry the moral majority “Drugs are illegal, alcohol’s legal, therefore it’s not a drug.” Bullshit,of course it is, both alter your perception. Both enhance a good time (and a bad one). Why did I try drugs? I wanted to see what they did so that I could make a decision on them based upon my own experience. Did I enjoy them? Oh yes, (apart from cocaine which I only tried once as I couldn’t see the point of putting the price of pair of shoes up my nose for the same effect as drinking three expressos very quickly.) I had a whale of time, laughed my ass off and had less ill effect than I had after drinking three glasses of wine. Was I an addict? No, if the opportunity came about to try them - I did - if it didn’t, then it didn’t and I didn’t think about them. Why did I stop? I’d tried them. Did I care that they were illegal and that being found with them in my possession could have landed me in jail. Stoned or straight - it never even crossed my mind.
The illegality of drugs doesn’t prevent anyone doing them. If you want to take drugs you will, if you don’t you won’t. Whether they’re legal or illegal makes no difference. Did prohibition work? Well alcohol’s legal in America so the answer has to be no. It put the revenue from alcohol into the hands of the criminal classes but it didn’t stop people getting drunk. Seeing any parallels here? (for all you people reading under the influence that’ll be the two straight silvery blue lines you can see leading to infinity - and not the lobster that’s dancing on top of your stereo.) I’m sorry I’m being flippant - it’ll be the effects of all that clean living,
The late, great and much lamented Bill Hicks had a monologue about drug use which suggested that if you were really anti-drugs you should throw out ninety percent of your record collection. He pointed out that the Beatles were so high on drugs that they let Ringo sing a couple of tunes and probably had to pull him off the ceiling with a long stick before they could record them. He has a point. I’m not sure if it excuses Pages’ 20 minute guitar solo in Dazed and Confused but it certainly explains it. Coleridge, Blake, Borroughs, Hemmingway, to name but a few - were, to paraphrase Hicks - real fucking high (on their own particular proclivity.) Does this mean that everyone who takes drugs will become a brilliant musician or writer. Of course not - its just pointing out that not every drug-user is living in a squat on the wrong side of town and using drugs to escape from an empty life. Most are simply normal human beings who function quite normally in society and who prefer stimulants other than the ones that are legally available. These people hold down jobs, they pay their taxes and would no more consider themselves or be considered drug addicts than someone who enjoys a drink now and then would consider themselves an alcoholic. I’m not suggesting that any of the above are good for you - just that we shouldn’t be so hypocritical in our definition of good and bad drugs.
But drugs are bad. Drugs ruin peoples lives. You start off with a spliff and then you end up with a needle stuck in your arm dying in some cheap motel ( with the broken neon sign blinking on and off and the only sound the rain hitting the streets - let’s really cater to the cliches). If you take drugs you lose your job, your house, your car and your family (hey- drugs are getting more appealing by the minute) and you start talking with a heavy Scottish accent. We must protect our families, we must keep our society clean and free from all pernicious influences because…all together now…drugs are bad. I’m all for it. Let’s make society a stimulant free zone. Lets shut down and board up every single pub and off-license in the land. Let impound all the cars that come back from the continent loaded with booze. Lets stop celebrating events with champagne, drowning our sorrows and taking a shot of Dutch courage. Lets stop doling out antidepressants and beta blockers like they’re sweets and instead tell people to stand on their own two feet and get on with (and over) it.
Or, we can hold our hands up and say honestly - look, the drug laws as they stand don’t work. We can go into shop and legally buy a bottle of spirit which will, if we drink it to excess, change our mental state to the point where we will become either euphoric or violent and which has the potential to kill us or others but we can’t legally buy a pill that has the same effect. We worry about our children and the dealers on the street corner but we don’t worry about the liquor stores on every street corner. We can go to the doctors and tell them we don’t feel so good and they’ll rip off a prescription for Prozac or Seroxat, both of which are proven to cause psychosis in some cases and people swallow them without a seconds hesitation secure in the knowledge that because they’re legal, they’re somehow safe.
Those who chunter about the re-catergorising of cannabis are paranoid about the rise of cannabis psychosis. “It’ll be reefer madness”, they cry as they down their pints. Definitely a case of kettle calls pot black. Yes there are cases of cannabis psychosis - yes it isn’t pretty. Neither is cirrhosis, hepatitis, diabetes, emphysema, lung cancer or HIV. You can get these diseases from taking drugs - but y’know what? You can get them from other things too. So - lets make homosexuality illegal because you can get HIV and AIDS from that, lets impose prison sentences on the overweight because they obviously eat too much sugar, lets ban smoking - oh sorry we’ve already done that, lets outlaw alcohol. Lets (and this will really screw up most of our trendy town centres) - outlaw coffee because… if you’ve ever sat in cafe talking complete crap after one latte too many…then…whey hey - welcome to the world of the amphetamine
For every case of cannabis psychosis there are a lot more people who will have a spliff instead of a whisky to unwind, an E or a line of coke instead of a few vodka’s on a night out or a drop a tab in the company of similar like minded people once in a while and these people will have no ill effects other than perhaps a mild depression and a chewed up lip the morning after.
Now I know that I’m writing from the point of view of “recreational” drug use and it may seem like I’m ignoring the fact that there are areas in which addiction and particularly heroin addiction is a very real problem. I’m not disputing that heroin is addictive. I’m not disputing that a burned out spoon and a used syringe is not a pretty thing to find in your back yard. I’ve found them on my stair and if I had kids I wouldn’t want my kids to be playing with them. I wouldn’t want my kids to play with cat shit either because there’s a chance they’ll get toxoplasmosis, but since I have a litter tray in my house then there’s a high risk that when I’m not watching they’ll get their sticky little fingers into the tray- after all it looks vaguely like a sandpit and its got its own little spade. So you know what - we need to ban cats too.
I still think that we should legalise all drugs. Drugs don’t cause poverty - bad governmental policies, lack of education (aka bad governmental policies) the gradual erosion of skilled workers (aka bad governmental policies), the formation of sink estates (aka bad governmental policies), a welfare state that pays the bare minimum to survive but not enough to engender self respect (aka bad governmental policies) shall I go on…? Maybe - radical thought here - just maybe, if drugs were legal and were available in the same way that alcohol was then we would not only remove their mystic but their legalisation and therefore standardisation would mean that there would be less deaths through accidental overdose. Most people who take heroin know to the nth degree how much constitutes a safe dosage and in itself though addictive the actual usage of heroin does not in itself cause social deviation (after all it was once known as the soldiers disease what screws them up is the varying degree of purity of the drug sold at street level. From the increased government revenue (because of course the government would tax drugs at least at the same rate that it taxes alcohol) then maybe some of the social problems that cause addiction and a need to escape from society could be addressed. Maybe not - but since the current laws are obviously failing then perhaps its worth a try.