Last night (Wednesday 16th February) I took part in a debate about drugs at the Institute of Economic affairs (IEA) in London. My opponent was a Mr Christopher Snowdon. I made arguments familiar to readers here, mainly the recitation of unquestionable facts and examples, about the deliberate decision of the British governing class to cease to enforce the laws against possession of (technically) illegal drugs, above all the laws against cannabis.
As usual, I might as well not have bothered. Much of the audience, Thatcherite liberals and ‘libertarians’ who have swallowed Friedrich Hayek, followed him up with a heavy helping of J.S.Mill and for some reason think they are conservatives, and my opponent, whose contribution deeply disappointed me, sat there while I said these things ( I was going to say ‘listened’, but I think that may be a severe and misleading exaggeration) and then they continued to advance their standard argument, that this country is subject to a wicked and severe ‘prohibition’ of drugs, which causes grave harm and must therefore be ended. And then there were the usual patsies of the ‘Medical Marijuana’ fancy, long ago revealed by its inventor as a propagandist red herring.
They insistently use the word ‘prohibition’, to assert a wholly false parallel between the American ban on the sale and manufacture of previously legal, mass-produced and mass-consumed alcohol, with Britain’s wholly different drug laws. When the falsity (on every level) of the parallel is pointed out to them, they do not in any way engage, or enter into a proper discussion of the differences. They just do it again.
