A Silly Argument Completely Exploded

On Wednesday night I struggled through the flooded railway system to address a small dining club in one of our ancient university cities on the subject of drugs. It was a perfectly pleasant occasion packed with intelligent, nay distinguished, people, and I got a free meal. But I was dreading the moment when I had to speak, because I am now sadly used to the way in which the English middle classes have been brainwashed by the Big Dope lobby.

 

I did  find a number of supporters there, and at least one guest told me that what I said had caused him to think afresh, than which there is no better compliment,  and was glad of it.  But I also encountered a good deal of the standard-issue non-arguments of the Big Dope campaign which have been absorbed as conventional wisdom by much of respectable England, and which are generally quite unshiftable.

 

One actually asked a question containing almost all of the dud points listed below, even though I had just finished rebutting them all in some detail, as if I had not spoken at all . If you were to see this person in the street, you would imagine him to be (and he may well be) a huntin’ and shootin’ rural Tory who keeps black Labradors in a mellow stone Jacobean manor house. Yet it is this part of the population that has, in my experience been most totally penetrated by the Big Dope campaign. That is why I am now seriously contemplating emigration.

 

I was (miraculously) spared ‘wot abaht alcohol and tobacco, then eh? eh? eh?’

 

But I did encounter, in various forms:

Let’s get criminals out of the drug trade by legalising drugs

Surely if it were legal it would be easier to control?

People take drugs because of the thrill of illegality.

What about Portugal and Holland?

A free Englishman can do what he likes with his own body. Who are you to tell me what I can do with mine?

 

I shan’t waste time going round in circles on these. I gave myself quite a bad headache trying to do that on Wednesday night.

 

But I also encountered this one:

 

Your draconian (their term) laws have been tried in the USA and they haven’t worked there.

 

Alas, I generally carry facts and figures about Britain, but not about the USA. I was able to give a general answer on this, pointing out that marijuana possession was not in fact severely punished in the USA, but this was met with incredulity.

 

So this morning I looked up a few things and found a document I’ve never come across before which rebuts this fiction in impressive detail, explaining how the Big Dope campaign misrepresents the US figures to give a wholly false impression. It falls over itself to explain what softies the US authorities actually are.

 

 

https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/pdf/whos_in_prison_for_marij.pdf

 

 

 

There are, as it happens, very few people in prison in the USA for simple marijuana possession, let alone for a first offence. There are people in prison who have, as it happens, been charged with and sentenced for simple possession, but they are in prison for other reasons, a key difference. Some of those charged with ‘possession’ possessed such large amounts that their offences simply cannot be regarded as minor misdemeanours.  I urge you all to follow this link. Its figures are some years out of date but I have no reason to believe that anything substantial has changed since. I rather suspect it has got soppier. See this rather surprising source on the same subject :

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-prisons-are-full-of-people-in-for-marijuana-possession-19691231