Drugs

The View from 22 — Hunger strikes, a psychedelic return and Paul Ryan

Are we about to see revolutions on the streets thanks to crop prices? John R. Bradley argues in this week’s cover feature that crop price rises this year are going to lead to insurrection across the world. In the latest View from 22 podcast, Clarissa Tan discusses which places the price hikes will affect the most: ‘Places like Egypt that a lot of wheat and grain, including most of the Middle East. I think places where they are a lot of tension; the poorer nations like Yemen come to mind. But we can’t discount countries we might not think are poverty stricken – places like China or Russia, which have

Sinophobia, the last acceptable racism

The Chinese have excelled at London 2012, much to the annoyance of their Western rivals. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the claims against swimmer Ye Shiwen reflect irrational suspicion of her country. Here is an edited version of Ross’s article (you can read the full version here): The story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympics but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in Olympic history. I refer,

Government minister admits policy is insane; admits that insanity is only option

I like Ken Clarke. He remains a Class A act in a government that could do with more heft and bottom. So there’s that. And his candid admission that the War on Drugs is a failure is welcome. Alas, even Ken can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge that the only thing madder than continuing a mad policy is continuing a mad policy even after you’ve admitted it’s mad. Still, here’s Ken: ‘We have been engaged in a war against drugs for 30 years. We’re plainly losing it. We have not achieved very much progress. The same problems come round and round. I have frankly conceded that policy has not been

Amis’ hazy biography

With Martin Amis’ Lionel Asbo: State of England — the horrific account of a hard-living career criminal turned celebrity lottery winner — climbing the bestseller charts,  Li and his creator shouldn’t be confused. At least, that is according to Amis, who recently told the Spectator that he was never a rebel. Richard Bradford, author of last year’s universally panned Martin Amis: The Biography had planned on shining a light on Amis’ greener youth. At one point the vexed manuscript apparently included a fond Amis recollection of smoking joints in Picasso’s on the King’s Road, something that would have resulted in arrest in about ten minutes. On another occasion, Tina Brown’s

Thriving on skag

What is the best way to describe families who hitherto have been known by the horrible and demeaning term &”problem” families? These are families full of either psychotic, bad or simply anti-social people – kids who play truant, or smash stuff up, or stab people, skaghead parents who burgle and thieve, that sort of thing. How about Dysfunctional Monkeys? Or Hopeless Bastards?  Hertfordshire County Council has come up with the answer – henceforth these fine people will be known officially throughout the county as ‘thriving’ families, instead. Yes, that’s right – ‘thriving’. Excellent. A council spokesman said that the name change was intended to ‘achieve a more positive and aspirational

How to get around the EU (and weed smokers)

The Dutch government has just banned foreigners from the country’s ‘coffee-shops’ — aka, cannabis cafés. Given how often we’re told that you can’t ban EU members from doing anything, how did they manage it? Basically, it all comes down to residency. If you live there, then you can apply for what’s being called a ‘weed pass’. If you don’t live there, then no dice. But is it legal for the Dutch government to ban entry to EU citizens in this way? A group of 19 coffee-shop owners decided to go to court over the matter, worried about this potential loss of custom. But a Dutch judge threw out their case,

Nowhere to go but down

I am just old enough to remember the terrific fuss that was made about the first Scots literary renaissance when it kicked into gear in the early 1980s. Inaugurated by Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981), whipped up into a movement by Gray, Agnes Owens and James Kelman’s Lean Tales (1985), and sent on a downward spiral by the latter’s Booker-winning How Late It Was How Late (1994), its distinguishing features were Glasgie patois, the conviction that everything was Mrs Thatcher’s fault, and a colossal amount of swearing. If you knew the meaning of the word ‘fuck’, a critic once wearily suggested, then about 10 per cent of Kelman’s work was already

Drug War Madness: Canadian edition

Most of the time the most lunatic examples of Drug War mania, at least in the English-speaking world, come from the United States. but not always! Today’s villains are Canadian. Chris Snowdon has the details of the murderous contempt police in British Columbia have for their citizens. It seems there is a batch of contaminated Ecstasy on sale in western Canada. Five people have been killed. The police know what colour of pills are likely to have caused these deaths and they know what stamps are on the pills. So what are they doing? Nothing at all. Police in British Columbia are reluctant to tell the public what unique, colourful

A Drugs Question for David Cameron

Though scarcely the main thrust of James’s most recent post, this is still notable: Lib Dem conference delegates have just provided the press with a nice easy story, they’ve voted to set up a panel to look at the legalisation of cannabis and the decriminalisation of all drugs. I know James is tweaking the press corps just as much as he is enjoying the Lib Dems living up to their reputation on these matters. Those wacky dope-fiends in the grow-your-own-pot party! Nevertheless, could it be possible that the sandal-wearing geography teachers (sorry, this stereotyping thing is contagious) are right? I mean, are the drug laws defensible in either moral or

Vice girl Rowe takes another hit at Osborne

“I said to George [Osborne] jokingly that when you’re prime minister one day I’ll have all the dirty goods on you, and he laughed and took a big fat line of cocaine,” says Natalie Rowe, a former madam of the Black Beauties escort agency, in an interview with ABC’s PM programme. She adds, “It’s been said in the newspapers that he was at university. He wasn’t. At the time he was working for [former Tory leader now foreign secretary] William Hague…I remember that vividly because he called William Hague insipid.” This is not the first time that Rowe has made these allegations against Osborne, as the above picture attests. The

Our Crazy Drug Laws, Part XVI

As legal entertainments go Man facing jail after reporting his cannabis plants stolen is a pretty good one. The Edinburgh Evening News reports: Police were called to David Williamson’s home to investigate reports that he had been assaulted and robbed. But after Williamson volunteered that it was two of his prized cannabis plants which had been stolen, suspicious officers got a warrant to search the 34-year-old’s Edinburgh home and discovered a further 20 plants. Williamson was immediately arrested. The case caused barely disguised mirth among lawyers and officials at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today, when Williamson admitted producing a controlled drug at his Sighthill home in May this year. So far,

‘Fessing up to drug use, the Mensch way

Just the thing to liven up a slow news day: a response from the Tory backbencher Louise Mensch to a series of insinuating points put to her by “David Jones Investigative Journalists”. The points were all about her time working at the record company EMI in the 90s; about her drug use, night-clubbing habits, that sort of thing. And she has answered them in marvellously unapologetic fashion. You can — and should — read the whole exchange here, although Mensch’s response to the question of whether she “took drugs with Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham, including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front

Alex Massie

How A Mensch Responds to the Press

Journalist seeks to embarrass politician for crime of enjoying themselves before they became a politician and, apparently, must expect to have their every move vetted by prudes and scolds. Said hack wants to know if it is true that: Whilst working at EMI, in the 1990s, you took drugs with Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham, including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front of journalists. Photos of this exist. Blimey! Photos exist! Whatever next? So hats-off to Louise Mensch for her reply: Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Nigel Kennedy, whom I

Headline of the Day | 24 June 2011

It’s New Jersey so nothing should surprise anyone. Still, it turns out that the problem is that the cocaine has been cut with levamisole, a drug traditionally used to deworm livestock. So caveat coker if you’re in America this summer. Also, of course, one of the problems with illegal but popular markets is that the people who run them are so often so dashed unscrupulous… [Thanks to Jersey-girl RF for the tip-off]

Yes, There Is A War on Drugs. Part XIV.

On the one hand, it’s good that Ed Vulliamy is in the Guardian today highlighting the appalling miseries of the Mexican Drug War; on the other it’s unfortunate that his piece is so very desperately confused. But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. “Cartel war” does not explain the story my friend, and Juarez journalist, Sandra Rodriguez told me over dinner last month: about two children who

No More Facts for Lance

It seems that, in cycling as everything else, when the facts become intolerable it’s no longer credible to insist upon them. That being the case it’s not, perhaps, a great surprise that the Facts for Lance website appears to have disappeared. In one sense the question of whether or not Lance Armstrong ever took illegal performance-enhancing drugs is immaterial. He cannot prove a negative but nor do all those negative tests establish his innocence either. The difficulty for Armstrong and his legion of admirers is that the circumstantial evidence against him has become so substantial that you need to be unusually credulous to suppose that none of it can be

Yes, There Is A War on Drugs

John Rentoul’s column in the Independent on Sunday this week was uncharacteristically unpersuasive. His text was Mencken’s aphorism that “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong” and Mr Rentoul suggested the Cardoso Commission’s report on drug legalisation is an example of this approach. Well, perhaps. But I think “neat, plausible, and wrong” actually better characterises the Drug Warriors mania for prohibition. To which one might add “ineffective” too. Most advocates* of decriminalisation or legalisation (as Rentoul says, two different approaches) concede that these alternatives will not eradicate all of the problems associated with drug use but argue instead that they will make

Just Say Yes, Dave

When David Cameron was a backbench MP he condemned the “abject failure” of the War on Drugs. And when he campaigned for the Troy leadership he said it was time for “fresh thinking and a new approach” to drug policy. He correctly noted that “Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades.” While a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee he said the then-government should “initiate a discussion” at the United Nations to consider “alternative ways – including the possibility of legalisation and regulation – to tackle the global drugs

Our Drug-Stuffed Prisons

It’s not that I disagree with this post by Blair Gibbs, nor that I don’t think he makes a number of reasonable points. There’s clearly a problem with drugs in prison even if it it’s not, one supposes, on anything like the same level as the Cousins’ difficulties in that area. Nevertheless, surely the most obvious point to make is that if we cannot keep illegal drugs out of prison at what point do even prohibitionists recognise that the War on Drugs can’t be won*? Ah, they say, sure, perhaps it can’t be, you know, won but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting! Maybe. But at what point is

The drug infestation in our prisons

Despite the focus on the government’s controversial plans to reduce the prison population, the troubled Prison Service continues to cause headaches for Ministers in another way — by failing to get on top of the security problems plaguing the estate In the 1990s, when Michael Howard was in Ken Clarke’s position, the concern of ministers was escaping inmates. The Prison Service has made huge strides on this, despite ongoing issues with the open prison estate and day-release of some inmates. But now the ever-present problem is lax internal security and especially drug-infestation. The jailing this week, for two years, of a prison officer based at Feltham Young Offenders Institution is