Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jul 2001
Source: Independent  (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Author: Bruce Anderson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

OUR BIGGEST PROBLEMS ARE NOT HEROIN, COCAINE AND CANNABIS

'The Greatest Social Ills And Moral Hazards Confronting Britain Are 
Illegitimacy, Abortion And Tobacco'

Ann Widdecombe now has her political memorial, but it is not one she 
would have sought. Indeed, there has never been a more piquant 
example of the law of unintended consequences. Miss Widdecombe will 
go down in history as the politician who laid the groundwork for the 
legalisation of cannabis.

For some years, a lot of politicians had been happy to agree that the 
current law was defective - but only in private. None of them was 
prepared to risk a clash with public opinion. The assumption was that 
if any senior politician called for the legalisation of cannabis, the 
tabloids would destroy him, claiming that if he had his way the 
entire nation would be comatose in a Limehouse opium den within 72 
hours.

So there was hardly any public debate. Politicians who were uneasily 
aware that the existing law was ineffective and intellectually 
vacuous felt obliged to keep such doubts to themselves. Then 
suddenly, everything changed. Enter Miss Widdecombe, stage right, 
calling for intensified efforts to persecute cannabis users and 
expecting universal applause. Instead, she received near-universal 
derision. Most people thought that she was being ridiculous, and a 
number of senior Tories broke ranks to say so. Moreover, when it was 
revealed that several members of the Shadow Cabinet had taken 
marijuana, the public reaction was not outrage, but "so what?''

At that moment, a number of politicians realised that they had been 
underestimating the public's sophistication. The legal regime on 
cannabis began to crumble, a process which has accelerated. A law 
whose intellectual foundations are so manifestly defective ceases to 
be enforceable and becomes an embarrassment.

All this raises awkward questions, which go well beyond cannabis. 
Last October, I asked Ann Widdecombe what right the state had to 
regulate the private behaviour of adults, and did not receive an 
answer. It is not the sort of question which modern politicians enjoy 
- - though Mr Portillo may be an exception - yet it ought to be 
addressed.

Even those of us who are instinctively libertarian should acknowledge 
that the social consequences of libertarianism are not always 
satisfactory and that the authoritarian case is too important to be 
left to crude populists such as Miss Widdecombe. Nor is it clear why 
social authoritarians should concentrate their energies on the use of 
illegal drugs. There are far more important problems.

The greatest social ill, moral hazard and health hazard confronting 
modern Britain are not heroin, cocaine and marijuana. They are 
illegitimacy, abortion and tobacco. Over recent decades, the 
institution of marriage has collapsed, leaving large numbers of 
children to be brought up any old how. Our prisons and lunatic 
asylums are full of the resulting social wreckage.

When David Steel's Abortion Act was passed, many of those who voted 
for it did so to relieve desperate girls from the threat of the 
back-street abortionists' gin bottles and knitting needles. It was 
never intended that abortion should become a long-stop contraceptive. 
I always find it curious when left-wing lawyers, who are normally 
enthusiastic about extending the law's protection to the vulnerable 
and the powerless, should be equally enthusiastic about abortion. 
What could be more powerless or vulnerable than a foetus?

A smoker's cardiovascular system is almost in the same vulnerable 
category, yet at present we allow 16-year-olds to buy fags. They are 
far too young to give consent for such a dangerous activity as 
smoking (or being sodomised). But does anyone believe that it would 
be possible to prevent 16-year-olds from smoking should they choose 
to do so?

That illustrates the difficulty of using the law to prohibit 
undesirable behaviour. It is far less necessary to punish adults for 
taking cocaine than it is to discourage young girls from becoming 
single mothers. Yet in the important case, the law is powerless. 
Traditionally, the law and the churches exercise a discipline over 
private moral behaviour. Now, they are almost equally impotent.

This does not mean that we should be happy to embrace moral anarchy. 
A generation ago, when Roy Jenkins was a liberalising home secretary, 
he was regularly accused of encouraging a permissive society. He 
would always deny the charge, insisting that he was merely in favour 
of a civilised society. That may have been his intention, but no one 
could now claim that all the consequences of the social changes of 
the 1960s have been civilised.

It is possible to be a libertarian and still believe in original sin. 
The challenge now is to prevent individual freedom leading to social 
chaos. That is the type of debating topic which Michael Portillo 
enjoys, and there is one statistic he often quotes: that a Dutch 
teenage girl is seven times less likely to become pregnant than her 
English equivalent is. Yet it seems improbable that she has seven 
times less sex. It may be that the Dutch have tackled their drug 
problem in the wrong way, and that excessive liberalisation has had 
undesirable consequences. But they could obviously teach us a thing 
or two about sex education.

Mr Portillo would want his party to learn such lessons. Assuming that 
he becomes the new Tory leader, he will set out to restore 
intellectual excitement to Tory politics, and will encourage his 
colleagues to open their minds and rein in their prejudices. He will 
reassure Tories who believe in social stability that he shares their 
objective. He will also insist that if this is to be more than a 
nostalgic fantasy, it will have to be achieved by new and unfamiliar 
methods.

This is difficult intellectual territory, with far more questions 
than answers. But that is the sort of area in which Mr Portillo is 
strongest. In that respect, he is no Thatcherite, for Margaret 
Thatcher was more simple minded. She seemed to think that it was 
possible to be an economic liberaliser and a social authoritarian; 
she never recognised the potential contradiction.

She thought that people should be free to do what they ought to do. 
She did not seem to realise that if you give people freedom, some of 
them will inevitably do what they ought not to do. A friend of mine 
once suggested to her that there was a case for legalising cannabis. 
She was furious. "That would be like legalising theft,'' she snapped.

Mr Portillo would recognise that she was guilty of a false analogy; 
smoking marijuana is not the same as theft. But if adults are allowed 
to purchase marijuana, which is certainly not a harmless drug, why 
should they not also be allowed to purchase heroin or cocaine? Why, 
indeed, should there be any limitations on the private freedom of 
private individuals, as long as they understand that they must accept 
the consequences of their actions?

Such discussions are not likely to win or lose many votes, but if the 
Tory Party proved willing to indulge in a little intellectual 
boldness on the subject of drugs, some voters might then conclude 
that the Tories were once again a thinking party. All this may 
horrify a number of traditional Tories. But that is one problem with 
thinking. Once the process starts, it is not always easy to predict 
the end result.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe