Tying up a Few Loose Ends

I shall be travelling for a few days, and posting only my 'Mail on Sunday' column during that time.  Before I go, a few general remarks.

Plainly I can never hope to reach agreement with all my correspondents. Too many of our differences result from disagreements on principle and purpose – the drug issue being the most obvious of these, and the God issue being the one on which passion so often gets in the way of logic. On cannabis, either you want a society which thinks that mass stupefaction is a noble aim, or you want one which thinks it is a squalid path to moral and material decay. That is what it is about, though it seems to me that the truth lies very much on the anti-cannabis side, in the discussion about the dangers of cannabis to the human mind, as opposed to the 'Red Herring' (as Mr Keith Stroup of NORML described it, so complain to him if you don't like the phrase. Don't accept any attempts to deny that he said it, because he did and I have proved it (see aerlier posts). Nor was it 'taken out of context' or any other such excuse) of 'medical cannabis'.

I still think the 'medical cannabis' people have three very deep holes out of which they must climb. First, experts in all the complaints allegedly treated by cannabis ( e.g MS, Glaucoma)  attest that there are better, less risky and less intoxicating ways of treating them; two, how can THC be properly tested against a placebo?  Its intoxicating effects are so powerful that nobody could conceivably be unaware that he had been given a sugar pill instead. Proper blind testing is therefore impossible; third, I have yet to find any advocate of 'medical cannabis' who does not join the campaign for general legalisation, and allow himself or herself to be used by it. Surely, if such people really wanted cannabis to be legalised *as a medicine* they would have nothing to do with a campaign for general legalisation of its use for recreation? Associating themselves with such people is bound to delay (at the very least) the outcome they claim to seek. I have never heard an answer to any of these points, only abuse for my alleged callousness.

On religion, there are a number of guests here who are at least prepared to own to the merits and intelligence of their opponents. But alas there is also Mr 'Bunker', who moans about his supposed mistreatment here.

He really should grasp the fantastic tolerance and patience which is and has been extended to him. He comes here almost daily,  hiding behind his boastful and self-important fake name, skipping about, scampering just out of range of facts and logic whenever they threaten to get the better of him (the word 'impossible' always occurs as he scurries up the nearest hazel bush, chattering derisively at whoever has almost caught him) ,  like a sort of atheist Squirrel Nutkin . He emits little squeaks of derision at believers, ignorantly equating them to polytheists, and repeatedly telling them(in the face of many requests to refrain from these bad manners)  their faith is indistinguishable from beliefs in goblins, fairies and unicorns. Whenever anyone pins him down he wriggles out from underneath the argument by changing the terms of it. And when his own words are played back to him, he complains of 'misrepresentation'. I would say he was insufferable. And yet I am resolved to suffer him. I was however entertained by a contributor who summed up the view of Mr 'Bunker' as (roughly) 'Belief in God is possible for humanity in general, but it is impossible for Mr 'Bunker'.'  I think this is actually quite fair, emphasises just how special he is, or thinks he is, and brings us round again to the real question to which we cannot know or even(in detail) guess the answer, because Mr 'Bunker' hides from us his true name and identity. What is he really like?

That of course leaves us free to speculate.

But not now. I've had enough of that. I've also had enough of Mr 'Ludicrous Pseudonym' who has repeatedly tried to attribute to me thoughts about fatherless families which I haven't held, and words about them I haven't said. Now he wants me to set out a detailed policy on exactly which benefits would be withdrawn, at nine months' notice, to discourage the future formation of such families.

The answer is, I haven't gone into detail, because there is at present no hope of the policy being implemented. As soon as it is, I shall examine the current situation in detail and make detailed suggestions. But I can assure him that I have no intention of allowing any human creature to starve to death, or go without shelter, if I can help it. It seems to me to be quite possible devise a system which achieves that, without actively encouraging fatherless families, as our present system does.

What annoys me about the assaults of Mr 'Ludicrous' is a) that he assumes that I am either motivated by cruelty or indifferent to suffering, and that eh cannot see that the current arrangements are not the default position of human society, but a special set of circumstances, which as far as I know exist almost uniquely in this country, and which can be correlated with an enormous increase in fatherless families. 

You can respond to this in several ways. You can say you think fatherless families are a good idea – I'd really like it if someone would actually come out and openly argue for this consequence, since even if it wasn't originally intended, it is clear that it is and has been the consequence of existing welfare policies for several decades. An unintended consequence which is not corrected after four decades can, I think, be reclassified as intentional.

You can argue that this revolutionary change in our society has other reasons (in wich acse, of course, reforming the payments would not reduce the rate of creation of fatherless households.

Or you can shout boo-words into the void, about 'attacking single mothers' ( absolutely and demonstrably not my intention. I believe they act rationally, and cannot be punished for doing so. It si the government which has misled them which I attack) , or about leaving women and children in destitution to 'teach them a lesson'.

I can respect the first two, and would be interested in debating the matter. But the third I dismiss with contempt.

One or two other points. I'm told that cannabis never used to be illegal. True enough. And nor did cocaine. Note, particularly, the opening scenes in the Sherlock Holmes story  'The Sign of Four' (in many ways my favourite of the long stories) in which Holmes injects himself with cocaine and Watson furiously disapproves. It is made clear that on other days Holmes has been taking morphine, that is, heroin.

Watson expostulates : '"But consider!" I said, earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."

Readers of the Wootton Report of 1969( which can be found on the Internet with ease) will find that until the middle 1960s, use of cannabis in this country was tiny, and restricted to very small social groups. The reason for the growing government concern and legislation as that, for some unknown reason, cannabis was by then beginning to spread far beyond the small circles where it had been used, and was becoming a major drug. The statistics in Wootton are interesting.

United Kingdom convictions for Cannabis possession stood at 4 (four) in the whole year of 1945, rising to 79 in 1950, 115 in 1955, 235 in 1960 and 626 in 1965. Then something happened. In 1966, the figure almost doubled to 1,119, and in 1967 doubled again to 2,393. Of course compared with now, when in England and Wales alone the police (who aren't really interested anyway) handle more than 160,000 cannabis possession cases a year, and let off the great majority with meaningless cautions and other disposals, these figures are microscopic. The question is, how much has the decriminalisation of cannabis in Britain, stealthy and gradual but undeniable, contributed to this growth.

The idea that if you weaken the laws against a pleasure drug its use will not rise is so laughable that I will just laugh at it.

As for tobacco, I praise the subtlety with which it has been pulled back from full legality to semi-legality. One of the measures  last effective in reducing smoking has been the application of the law to property owners who allow it to be smoked on their premises. Similar laws on cannabis have, in the same period, been repealed. The alws on the two drugs are moving in almost exactly opposite directions.

A contributor who has also read 'Sir Nigel' and 'the White Company' chides me that I didn't act as Nigel Loring would have done, towards my critic in Southampton.  Well, I'm sure the good Samkin Aylward, Nigel's hard-headed squire,  would have counselled me against staining lance or sword on such a person. Samkin himself might have given him a buffet, but I doubt if either man would have regarded this sad, sunless creature as worthy of chivalrous combat.
Anyway, in Nigel's time there was no politically corrected police force and CPS,  anxious to uphold the human rights of the cannabis community.  I'm no great fighter myself, but my guess is that most British police forces would seek to prosecute *me* for *being* assaulted by a political critic, were that to happen. And they might well persuade the Crown Prosecution Service to do so. Think I'm making this danger up? Then look up the amazing story of the preacher Harry Hammond, a frail and elderly man who was indeed arrested and prosecuted in Bournemouth, after being attacked and pelted with mud by young, fit, strong people who did not like his views on homosexuality. Nothing happened to his assailants.  Mr Hammond died shortly after being convicted and fined, and posthumous efforts to appeal against his conviction have failed.  Peter Tatchell, to his lasting credit, spoke up against this appalling behaviour by the police and courts.

Returning for a moment to Nigel Loring, I do wish more people would read Doyle's historical novels. 'Micah Clarke', about the Monmouth Rebellion, is I think the best, but they are all witty, clever, enthralling, informative and unjustly neglected. Doyle hopes to be remembered for them, rather than for Holmes.