The Perfect Drug

Bob Ainsworth is a home office minister, and has recently called for all drugs to be legalised in an effort to beat the criminals who supply it on the streets. Or rather, the people who supply it to the people who supply it on the streets. Tackling street dealers annoys me. Arresting a street dealer is like blocking up one of those tiny holes in the end of a watering can, and wondering why water still comes out when you tip it. You need to remove the source, then you don't have to worry about the little holes. Plus, think of all the time and money has gone into prosecuting our friend on the streets. It does nothing. Acheives nothing. Changes nothing.

It's the same as prosecuting people who download child porn off the internet. By all means find these people but don't prosecute them, offer them help. They are mentally ill and should be treated as such. I'll tell you who you can go after though: the people who make it, upload it on to the web, and charge money for the mentally ill to view it. That's where the problem is so that's where you go to solve it.

Ainsworth believes the medical profession should supply drugs through prescription. Logistically, i can see problems there. I know a huge amount of people who smoke that pathetic drug, cannabis. I can forsee very long queues of people wanting to get a 'script for that, and Boots would have to turn into a warehouse rather than a high street store to keep up with demand.

However when it comes to hard drugs, the notion of prescriptions should be welcomed. Heroin is at best 20 - 25% pure according to a recent study of heroin scored on the streets of Liverpool. What else then, is also going into their bodies? Do you even care?

Cocaine - probably a greater degree of purity, but it can be cut with glucose powder if you're lucky, and all kinds of awful things if you're not.

So not all good news for the junkie, but the idea that legalisation of such substances would take Johnny Pusher off the street is daft. The idea that it would do away with the shadowy heads of organisations that bring the drugs into the country, and cut off their earnings - which run into millions - is even more daft. These people won't just say "It was fun while it lasted" and then apply at McDonald's. They'll move on. Fraud. Identity theft. Heck, even armed robberies. Johnny Pusher will mug you, and our shadowy underworld figure will steal the passcode to your internet bank account.

As a human, in possession of a mind and body, i should be allowed to do as i wish with it.
However, we must bear in mind that some people are idiots. Well, actually there's quite a lot of idiots, just take a walk outside you'll spot 'em. I use to oppose the idea of banning films. I believed they were pieces of art, i believed they were skillfully made and i believed they had no effect on a person's disposition. I didn't believe they could influence someone in a negative fashion and that if someone wanted to perpetrate a crime, they would do so without having watched Goodfellas before hand. Now, i'm not so sure. Some people really are fucking idiots, and i wouldn't let them loose with a remote control. They cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, and they consider themselves to be someone - or something - they're not.

If i want to take cocaine, to wake me up and make me feel good, i should be allowed to do so. I should be allowed to take the money into a reputable establishment and ask for it. The product i am given should be as pure as it can get without making my heart explode, and i should be given a clean tube with which to administer the drug. Once i've had my enjoyment, i can then just forget about it for a while until i fancy another boost.

Seems simple, but this is the pattern of drinking for some. They dip in and out, they socialise with it, then they return to life. For others, they become alcoholics, and for some social or recreational drug users, they become addicted. Just because i know when enough is enough, we must remember that some people are fucking idiots, and they don't know where the line is. Or, they do, but they want to impress their friends by stepping over it.

I read a good question the other day; "Would you rather bump into a drunk, or someone who's stoned at three in the morning on a city street?"
For me, it'd be the stoner every time. He might try and enlighten me, he might laugh at me - wouldn't be the first -, he might try and get me to 'toke' with him.
What he wouldn't do, is ask me what i was fucking looking at before threatening to harm me physically. We've all been there. Drunks are assholes. Angry drunks are cunts.

Yet alcohol is widely available. And there's good alcohol (Guinness and Jamesons) and shit alcohol (Hofmeister and Jack Daniels). So you pays your money, you gets a-wasted. The state however, makes a whole lot of cash from your booze and they have the potential to do so with legalisation of drugs.

Let's talk frankly here, they're called drugs because they make you feel better. Perhaps the root of the matter, the question of why people are feeling bad enough to want to take drugs should be addressed. Drugs are a sticking plaster, sometimes over an amputation. As such, they won't work. No matter how big the plaster, you still have a problem.

I applaud Ainsworth's style, his guts, and his attempts to try and discuss ways ahead with Britain's drug problems and its so-called 'War On Drugs'. Not sure how you can either wage or win a war with an inaminate object but there you go. Of course the hand-wringers will win, and Bob will be shouted down and probably fired.

I applaud the idea of legalistation. Because i'm a grown up. Because i'm a human. Because i believe a break from reality is essential every now and then. Because i believe the brain to be a marvellous thing, and to stimulate it in various ways through chemicals is no different to looking at porn or reading a poem. Stick your head in an fMRI machine whilst doing coke, looking at Tori Black going for it, or appreciating Yeats, and areas of your brain will fire up relating to pleasure. That's it. That's all drugs do. Fire up and stimulate areas of organic matter. It seems painfully stupid to me to try and stop people having fun and enjoying life, but certainly the coalition seem hell-bent on putting the mockers on it. Full marks to Ainsworth then.

I find it ironic also that most of the customers for coke deals are people who work in the City for huge corporations. My friend told me that i don't understand irony. Which was ironic because we were waiting for a bus.