By Jeremy Sare.
The perennial problem with public debates on drugs policy is that, in no time, the views of either side of reformers and prohibitionists become hugely misrepresented, to both their mutual fury.
These discussions are invariably highly polarised with hardly any, or usually no, middle ground being agreed upon. If it were a boxing match, both fighters would be called constantly by the referee for illegal throws.
Last Friday’s Newsnight (10 August) on BBC television was an even more extreme example of confrontation than usual about illegal drugs. The issue was abstinent recovery or controlled management of heroin addiction. The humour and original wit of actor and comedian Russell Brand as a protagonist saved it from being yet another of those thoroughly depressing encounters where one side wants a free for all and the other wants to imprison half of society.
Brand knows his material: he was for some years a fairly chaotic and committed addict who could consume heroin, crack and alcohol in substantial quantities. His forthcoming programme on BBC3 Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery, includes Brand sat in the comfort of the Savoy Hotel, London watching footage of himself, ten years earlier, smoking heroin.
Despite his career success in the UK and now in the U.S. he remained “jealous” of his former self. “It means nothing to me: the money, the power, the fame, the sex, the women. None of it. I would rather be a drug addict.” Such intense levels of addiction have led him to conclude abstinence is the only solution and that it is a huge mistake for the Government to provide methadone as a heroin substitute to 149,000 UK addicts.
I personally agreed with one of his guest experts, Dr. Clare Gerada, Chair of Royal Society for General Practitioners, that for many dependant on heroin, taking prescribed methadone is the best way to stop them overdosing and keeping their lives stable and away from crime.
But Brand’s adversary on Newsnight on Friday, Daily Mail columnist, Peter Hitchens took the harshest possible line when he declared addiction as simply a “crime”. In his blog he has already stated, contrary to decades of medical science that he, “doesn’t believe in addiction”. In Hitchens’ monochrome view of a complex social issue, the mere threat of imprisonment, effectively policed, would be sufficient to deter use. If it were only that simple, I think Governments would have tried that already. It would appear that people desperate enough to take heroin are not deeply troubled by the prospect of being arrested.
Brand treated Hitchens with good-humored contempt calling him, “like an unusual child” and his proposed solution to drug addiction was, “foghorn madness from bygone times”.
Hitchens was also promoting his new book, “The War We Never Fought” where he seeks to illustrate how drug use in UK has been de facto legalised. At a recent hearing of a Parliamentary committee, where Brand also gave evidence, he chose to illustrate the rise in use by referring to the number of arrests. This seemed odd if not perverse; you could hardly prove legalisation is a reality when a million people in UK have been arrested for drug offences in the last ten years. And more than that, addiction to opiates predates our drug laws by centuries so there was certainly a time when it was de jure not a “crime”.
Eventually the encounter produced more heat than light and more laughter than anything. In the middle of the fray was Conservative MP David Burrowes whose ideological influence on UK drug policy has been infuriating drug reformers. In the midst of the battle of outrageous statements and verbal counter punches, his controversial views sounded almost mild and reasonable in comparison.
