30 Days – Day 20 – “Drugs & Alcohol”

Your views on drugs and alcohol.

Yes to both pretty much. The war on drugs has failed miserably, and were it not for politicians being terrified of admitting that the mantra they’ve spouted for decades was pretty much wrong the most popular drugs would already be legalised. I’m not a hippie, I don’t believe in all that “it’s just a plant man” mother nature, spirit of the Earth shite. The fact is that for all the laws and fines and prison sentences, I’m not more than an hour away from getting anything from oregano to heroin, and neither are you. Anything you like is available whenever you want, yet for some reason we’re not all junkies. The same as we can all buy enough drink to kill us a couple of times over yet few of us are alcoholics.

I was sceptical of the evils of drugs ever since my age was still in single digits. Back then there was no weed, smack, coke etc, there were only DRUGS! And they all stood a very good chance of killing me if I even so much as looked at them. And boy, they could look like anything. Some of them were in brightly coloured little pills (like Smarties oh lawd!), some were a powder (like sugar sweet Jesus!) or even like cut grass (the very same as was all over the playing field outside holy fuck!). They could come wrapped in little plastic bags or tinfoil too. My mum had those in the kitchen! Was nowhere safe?! Horror stories were told of people who had died after taking drugs just once, and the grim faced policeman who was telling all us schoolkids about this even knew a guy who couldn’t walk from one end of the room to the other because he took drugs all the time. It didn’t matter if it was a toke on a spliff or shooting up with smack, there was absolutely no way I was going to live to see tomorrow if I did it. This didn’t make much sense to me even back then. Are you trying to tell me that people happily take this vile poison? Why would they do that if it was going to cause them to die in various horrible ways? Why are you saying all my friends will be doing it soon enough but I must stand tall and say no? If there’s no upside to it all, why do people even bother? Mr Officer, of Strathclyde’s finest, I think you might be telling me fibs.

That stuck. The feeling I wasn’t being told the whole truth took hold and became more of a certainty as the years went on and I learned that there are no drugs(!), there’s weed, smack, coke and all the rest. I learned that there are upsides to go with the bad parts, that what sensible upstanding people touted as art was made by those who took drugs. All the hippies smoked grass and took LSD, now they’re ready to start drawing their pension. The ravers on E in the early 90s are now pushing forty and driving Mondeos. Against all the odds, somehow they survived, some even flourished.

Like I said, I’m not a “legalise it!” spastic, drugs aren’t harmless. Some present fairly immediate risks of overdose or taking something completely different from what you thought, others make you feel awful the next day, many damage the body over time. Yet it stops no-one. In fact one of the main arguments against legalisation, that they’re dangerous because you never know for sure what it is you’re taking, is as a direct result of only being able to get what you want off of, y’know, unscrupulous fucking criminals. Right now we’re told the economy is on a knife’s edge, the whole of Europe might go to shit, now would be a great time for some extra pennies in the coffer. When even the readers of conservative rags are wanting a slice of the cash, maybe the time is right. It’s easier to control a legal business than it is a criminal enterprise, the drugs would be made safer, and of course there wonderful money to be made from it. Better than pissing money at the problem right?

Some say that overnight we’d be a load of junkies. But would we really? Are you right now? I don’t smoke fags, despite them being everywhere. I’ve looked at the pros and cons, and decided I don’t want to. Simple as that. I’m a couple of phone calls and a shorter wait than it takes to deliver a pizza before I could spend every penny I have on hash or coke, but I don’t. Self control wouldn’t go out of the window just because drugs were no longer illegal. Not to mention pulling the feet from under all of those horrible dealers we all hate so much. The current situation is hopeless, people want to get high, and high they will get, might as well make the product safer and send the money off to the Government. On second thoughts, let’s keep things as they are…