And a few more responses to responses

My goodness, the microscopic ingenuity of some of my critics. Take this, from Mr 'B':'Peter Hitchens still maintains that addiction does not exist; that each individual has the will power to resist the urge to take an action by which he might be tempted. However, he only seems to use such an argument when talking about drug or alcohol addiction. Contrast this with his views on television which he considers to be harmful and which he wishes had never been invented. In an article posted on this blog on 21/11/11, the reason he gives for this standpoint is that "very few humans have the will to resist it". If they do not have the will to resist television, something extraneous to their bodies, why does he imagine that they have the will to resist taking drugs, something which they ingest into their bodies and which Mr Hitchens has conceded can damage the brain? '

Human will is not a fixed quantity, but, like muscular strength, something that can be strengthened by use and weakened by disuse. If people are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, they will develop the will to do so. From their earliest childhoods, western children are left in front of TV sets by absent or lazy adults and accustomed to the passive state this engenders. Damage will be done, but they can be rescued from it, and indeed trained to rescue themselves. It's the same with drugs. The best thing with both is not to start at all, and deterrent punishment is good for preventing drug abuse. But I don't think we could make TV-watching, a crime, or even the dumping of children in front of TV a crime (though it is one) . In any case, the 'withdrawal symptoms' of supposedly addictive drugs are hugely exaggerated by fiction, movies and myth. It's probably harder to stop watching TV. But it's possible to stop doing both, if you want to.

Christopher Charles must grasp that many of the greatest human beings who ever lived came out of poverty and deprivation a thousand times worse than anything in modern Britain or the USA. How then can such poverty and deprivation be advanced as an excuse for the wilful crime of drug abuse? It just won't do. It's the propaganda of the tax and spend lobby (who always cream off a large share of that spending for their own fat salaries, and for whom even the riches of the 21st century are 'poverty'. For if 'poverty' ever ended, so would their fat salaries) .

Mr Falls makes similar excuses, which likewise serve the vast and well-funded 'treatment' industry and and its appendages ' Drugs and addiction are a symptom of Broken Britain not a cause, concealing the underlying issues of unemployment, poor education, poverty, alienation and despair that incompetent Westminster politicians have caused. ' They are neither a symptom nor a cause. They are immoral, criminal acts done by people controlled neither by conscience nor by law. If people have morals, there are fewer bad deeds. if they won't have morals, then they must have fear instead. Where would-be criminals fear the law, they do not break it. But where there are neither morals nor law, chaos follows.
Those who argue against morals and law, and excuse bad behaviour, are Apostles of Chaos, and will not be able to complain when it comes, kicking,  yelling swearing and screaming, to their front doors. The rest of us will blame them.

 'Baz' lectures me ;'One more time Peter, the father gave his consent for his children to be inoculated. Why do you think that a parent shouldn't be able to make decisions about the welfare of their children? The complication in this case was that the mother disagreed. It went to court, and the court found in favour of the father'

Well, one more time, Mr 'Baz', examine the real issue of how a free country can force this thing on three people who (as far as we know) don't want it, including the two who will undergo it, because a fourth does, who will not undergo it. As he later rightly points out, the parents are divided on the issue, which raises all kinds of problems. But in general, where a deliberative body (such as the parents in a  family) cannot reach agreement, the chairman (or Judge) must cast his vote in favour of the status quo. You cannot base an action on a vote which shows an even division on its merits.

He adds 'since there is no scientific evidence against MMR.'
Others differ about this. I understand there have been judgements in other jurisdictions which have suggested it may have problems, and I refer him to Vivienne Parry's interesting point in the Observer in July 2007 ( she is a supporter of the MMR)  :' "There's a small risk with all vaccines. No-one has ever said that any vaccine is completely without side effects. But we have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks. If we had measles, it would kill lots of children. If you have a vaccine, it will damage some children, but a very small number.'

I think that's the calculation, though as it happens I think the MMR zealots hugely exaggerate the dangers of measles. And what if your child is one of the 'some'? The State won't care, and may wish to deny any connection, using all its force and wealth to humiliate and belittle the persons involved, as States do. But you will care, quite a lot .
 
He continues:'The case is very much the same as the Neon Roberts case, when his mother tried to stop him receiving radiotherapy. Would you describe radiotherapy as a "serious assault"? I'm guessing not, as it wouldn't allow you to make ill-informed comments about MMR. '

Is it much the same? No, it's not the same at all, not remotely, and I'm shocked and rather revolted at the crudity and twisting involved in the suggestion. Neon Roberts was seriously ill, and the radiotherapy was a rational treatment for that illness, given the current state of medical knowledge  These two children are not ill at all, and if they were, the injection wouldn't cure or treat them. Even in cases of serious illness, people (or their parents) do have to sign consent forms for invasive surgery, in free countries.

Oh, and 'Baz' can be excused for not realising this, but I have recent personal experience of the effects of radiotherapy on a close relative, and having seen them, I can easily see why a mother would hesitate over allowing such a  thing to happen to a beloved child. It is a very powerful and severe process, searing and painful long after it has taken place. I would hesitate to undergo it myself, however bad the alternative.

 

Oh, and 'Paul P', with every appearance of not realising he is saying anything silly, posts : 'I think Mr Farage is taking a pragmatic position and making pragmatic points'

 

Does he really? Who'd have thought it? I am sorry to be reduced to sarcasm, but surely it is the only reasonable reponse to platitude posing as profundity.

Mr 'P' continues :'The market for recreational drugs is now simply too big, and as history shows with parallel issues, Prohibition in America as Mr Farage cites, the market will sooner or later prevail.'

 

When will the contributors who ceaselessly cite 'Prohibition' look it up and find out what actually happened? How many times have I dealt with this? Yet it has never even gone in one ear, let alone out of the other. He discovered this wonderful argument, years ago, and nothing is going to shift him from it, let alone facts.

 

'Prohibition' never even attempted to ban consumption or possession of alcohol. Tiny resources were devoted to enforcement of its bans on manufacture, transport and sale. The USA, unlike Britain, has vast unpatrolled borders, immense unwatchable coastlines and a huge interior. Alcohol had previously not only been legal, but in regular use by tens of millions. The German and Italian minorities, respectable, law-abiding and hard-working,  both regarded the Act as a prejudiced assault on their ways of life. There is, simply, no comparison.

Mr 'P' intones that 'Casualties, such as there inevitably will be in numbers deemed too small to count, will be tolerated.'

 

By whom? Not, I think, by the elderly, impoverished parents forced by an inadequate health service to nurse their ruined, hopeless, broken adult chidlren, seduced by the stupid propganda of the 'drugs are safe' lobby. *They* will not tolerate it. They will hate and resent it, or those who made it more likely,  and they will be right.

 

Mr 'P', perhaps immune from such a  threat, is jolly generous to offer to 'tolerate' it on their behalf, but I doubt if he will be offering himself (I'd conscript him if it were up to me, on the grounds of invincible smug self-satisfaction) to man the locked wards through the long, howling weekends, or provide respite care.

He says, grandly 'That's why we have an NHS.'

 

Is it so?   Does he have any idea of the hopeless inadequacy of our mental hospitals even now? How much worse will that be if the liberalisers get their way?

He concludes' Mr Hitchens' campaign will I fear come to be seen more and more as an idiosyncratic out-of-stepness with popular opinion, the sort of idiosyncrasy one sees from time to time announcing the coming end of the world on sandwich boards.'

Yes, I suspect he is right.  But when did the fact that something *is* so come to mean that it *ought* to be so? What logic, or moral calculus, leads to this conclusion?  That is, I accept,  the sort of society we are.  But whose fault will that be? Mine, for telling the truth? Or his, for sneering at me for doing so?

He concludes, bizarrely:' It is very regrettable because I think Mr Hitchens' underpinning moral reasoning is sound, that a drugged-up society moves irrevocably closer with every fix to an acquiescent state of political somnambulance.'

 

What will his role be in making this happen?