At a dinner party a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be sat near one of my heroes, Roger Scruton — like being a couch away from Socrates at a symposium. But then, halfway through, the great man began sounding off on one of the two things he is completely and utterly wrong about (the other one being pop music): drugs.
By ‘drugs’, of course, dear, brave, brilliant Roger didn’t mean to include the alcohol he had been quaffing all evening nor yet the highly addictive yet legal nicotine death sticks of which the Fawn and I had partaken before dinner. What he meant was yer proper, actual, tabloid horror drugs: cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, heroin, and the deadly, evil ‘gateway’ drug they call ‘spliff’.
As something of a spliff enthusiast myself I thought this was a bit much. Especially coming from a man whose philosophy generally springs from the most rigorous logic and the soundest libertarian principles.
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