Quintin Jardine's blog

The latest in a  long line of banana skins to slide out from under the feet of our beloved Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, AKA Captain Barbossa in this blog, (the Skipper’s spending a lot of time on his arse these days) seems to be the controversy surrounding a drug called mephedrone. Already it’s led to a series of resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Let’s face it, Gordon, if you set up an advisory body of people with a broad range of expertise on any subject and then tell them what their advice should be, you’re wasting their time and a lot of public money. For all that, the rump of the committee seems to have done what it’s been told by recommending that mephedrone and other so-called legal highs should be given a Class B rating and effectively outlawed.

How sensible is this? Yes, there have been some deaths linked to mephedrone, and every one is a tragedy. But does anyone in government believe seriously that its action will ensure that there are no more? If they do they shouldn’t be there. The most significant global criminal enterprises all have to do with the supply of illegal substances; now Captain Barbossa and his crew in their wisdom have effectively opened a new branch of their business. Does it make sense to you? I’m scratching my head. You might think that the consequences of the Volstead Act taught somebody something, but it seems not.

I know  this is a sensitive subject, bit . . . I heard a young doctor on telly this morning make an interesting point. He chose his words carefully, but in essence this is what he said. In our society, people have always taken stimulants socially, to give them a lift, as part of the process of relaxation. Yet the only one that the law allows is alcohol, which is in fact a depressant, and is linked to so many deaths that the truth is swept under the table, far, far more fatalities than those caused by synthetic compounds that might carry no risk at all if their manufacture was regulated and supervised properly. However it’s taxed  savagely, as we all know, so that seems to make it okay.

Is it too much to ask of the government, that instead of telling its advisors what to think, it should take the cuffs off them completely and as them to report on the whole issue of the regulation and criminalisation of all substances, natural and synthetic?

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, I’m not arguing the case for drugs here. For the last twelve weeks, for the first time in my adult (and truth be told, adolescent) life, I have eschewed alcohol. (Bugger! Now I’ve told you I’ll have to stick to it!) With that and some other dietary adjustments, my weight has dropped in that time from 102kg to 88kg. (Work it out for yourself if you want that in old money. I express it in kilos because there are fewer of them.) So, I’m not recommending that anyone should take anything legal or otherwise. But what I am saying is that maybe society should consider, objectively, whether its members should have a greater right to choose what they put into their own bodies.