A S I WAS SAYING
There should be zero tolerance for drugs, not alcohol and tobacco
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
Nero tolerance', as we have all recently learnt, is the theory that if the police crack down ruthlessly enough on petty breaches of the law, then this will in due course result in . deterring major breaches, on the time-honoured principle that if you take care of the pennies the pounds will take care of themselves. Put into practice in New York, this theory has proved a marvellous success. After years of turning a blind eye to minor offences, like dropping litter in the street and spraying graffiti on public buildings, the police began to throw the book at the perpetra- tors, and lo and behold, the murder and rape figures really did begin to drop, prov- ing that if you don't give them an inch, they won't take a mile. As far as I know, however, neither on the Other side of the Atlantic nor on this has the zero tolerance approach, so successful in tackling crime in general, been consis- tently applied to the growing problem of drugs. At the moment users of soft drugs, like pot, are allowed, for the most part, to get away with breaching the law, while the full rigours of enforcement are reserved for peddlers and users of hard drugs. The poli- el? is not working. Whether the zero toler- ance approach would work any better is dif- ficult to say. But it is only fair to point out that initially nobody believed that cracking down on graffiti and litter could have the slightest effect on murder and rape. To New York's liberal press the idea seemed too absurd for words. (Well, not literally, since they spent thousands of words rub- bishing it.) But a new mayor, with the courage of his zero tolerance convictions, pressed ahead in defiance of media scorn, and was proved triumphantly right. Encouraged by this experience, might it not be a worthwhile experiment — all else hav- ing failed — at least to test whether this miracle cure could have the same effect on drugs?
True, back in the 1960s, when the drug Problem first reared its ugly head, such a policy was tried. But so vociferous was the opposition from the great and the good, led by the Times, that it was stopped long before it had been given any chance to prove itself. The defining moment, as they say, was in 1967 when the Courts, applying the principle of zero tolerance (it was not Yet called that), sentenced Mick Jagger, then as now a high-profile rock star, to three months' imprisonment for possessing amphetamines. That really was zero toler- ance, since amphetamines were the softest of drugs. All heaven broke out. A leader in the Times, under the headline 'Butterfly Broken on Wheel', by its then editor, William Rees-Mogg, condemned the sen- tence as draconian. Bishops and psycholo- gists like Anthony Storr followed suit, as did all the other 'useful idiots' who allow their heads to be ruled by their hearts. Even a hard-headed young prospective Tory candidate, Jonathan Aitken, described by Time magazine as `a rising meteor', was one of a long list of distin- guished names advocating the legalisation of cannabis. Thereafter soft drugs were given a soft time. Here I have a confession to make. My journalistic record on drugs in the 1960s was no better, although fortunately much less memorable, than William Rees- Mogg's, and it very nearly put an end to my lifelong friendship with the late Colin Welch, about whom his son-in-law Craig Brown wrote so beautifully in The Spectator last week. Weighing in with a defence of Timothy Leary, then the reigning drug champion and apologist, I wrote: 'On most matters of morality, the inexperience of youth should give way to the experience of age. But on drugs, possibly for the first time in history, the inexperience of age should give way to the experience of youth.' `Experience of youth' was the near-disas- trous phrase, since I went on to say that I had reached that conclusion after an evening spent with my 16-year-old god- child. His name was not mentioned, but the then headmaster of Stowe, knowing Colin's son to be the youth in question and in search of a scapegoat to blame for the 'I'll have the green peas.' school's incipient drug problem, threatened to expel him. No wonder Colin's under- standably furious remonstrance began, `Were you not my oldest friend, this letter would have been written, not by me, but by my solicitor.'
Today, no less than 30 years later, one still reads articles by middle-aged journal- ists kowtowing to youth as the only people who know enough about drugs to have a worthwhile opinion, in spite of their authors being of the very generation whose own knowledge of drugs struck me as so extensive. Advertisements, too, are still appearing, signed by prospective Tory MPs, calling for cannabis to be legalised. Maybe that permissive slippery slope is indeed the one down which society ought to slither, in the same way as it has slithered down so many others. But not, I must insist, for want of any serious alternative, since the zero tolerance option has not been tried and found wanting but simply not tried.
Cannabis smokers have long had less cause to fear the police than have alcohol drinkers. While they can puff away at their joints to their hearts' content before driving home after a party, drinkers have to watch every sip. So far as alcohol is concerned zero tolerance has long been practised, with plans afoot, through random breathalysing, to tighten the screw even fur- ther. Every day perfectly respectable citi- zens, whose livelihoods depend on the use of their car, have their driving licences taken away for being ever so slightly over the limit. Yet no leading article ever appears in the Times comparing their fate to that of a butterfly broken on a wheel. Neither would any MP, of any persuasion, ever think of calling for the legalisation of drink and driving.
What hypocrisy, the young say, for a soci- ety which tolerates the older generation's favourite drugs of alcohol and tobacco to fight a war against pot and Ecstasy, youth's favourites. That might have been a fair complaint once. But the young, in this regard, are out of date. For today's hypocrisy is exactly the opposite. It is that of a society which, while pretending to fight a war against drugs, is in truth reserving its real fire for alcohol and tobacco. Judging by the way we are going, this country, in the 21st century, is more likely to be alcohol- and tobacco-free than drug-free. Zero tol- erance to drugs might reverse that trend, if only we had the will to apply it.
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