- Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:16 pm
#12495
Hitchens has a blog now. He's a person whose views I detest. However, to be fair to him, he does answer his critics in a constructive way on his blog. So I've sent a comment, waiitng for a reply.
Peter,
Re: the issue of drugs. Having been an abuser of hard drugs for a period, I recognise all too well your description of the unearned feeling of satisfaction and the anaesthetic effct when it comes to whatever ails you. I had acheived many ambitions in my career and was very successful, but had neglected my personal life and was in fact deeply unhappy. I'm off the drugs because I sat down one day and worked out why I was unhappy and resolved to put it right. I continue to work on this and hope that I never need a drug to artifically raise my mood again. If prohibition worked, I'd be in favour. I don't believe it ever will. There will always be a market and therefore always a motive for smugglers and dealers to find ways to keep one step ahead. Some of the most recent research in this field concluded that drug classification has little correlation with harm, and listed various drugs in order of danger. Alcohol and tobacco were included as benchmarks. The vast majority of currently illegal drugs fell below alcohol in terms of potential harm. If society accepts alcohol, the most rational and evidence-based approach must now be to accept all other less dangerous drugs. Regulate them, sell them, stick government health warnings on them, tax them and destroy the illegal markets. Why not?
You state, quite correctly, that drug use is selfish. So it is. But don't individuals have the right to choose to take risks with their health? Don't we all do this everyday in many other ways? Isn't any other approach simply a symptom of the nanny state? Not forgetting that there is a difference between 'use' and 'abuse' of any drug.