I’ve just listened to Radio 1 for the first time in a looong time and Newsbeat came on.
They had a quick bit about roadside testing for drug-drivers and they featured a quote from some cunt from Transform.
On Newsbeats website, the story is featured but not with the quote from the Transform chap.
Now, I’ve not looked at the Transform website in any detail so I don’t know if the drugs policy changes they advocate are any good, so like wise I don’t know if they’re heroes or wankers, but this chap that featured on Newsbeat has a fucking weird grasp of logic.
I’m gonna paraphrase things here, but essentially he said that this idea to test drivers for drugs is ridiculous because it would basically criminalise using drugs and turn a whole heap of people into criminals.
What. The actual. Fuck?
First off, illegal drug taking is already all but illegal. It is illegal to sell and to possess controlled substances, and seeing as you can’t put anything in your body yourself without, however briefly possessing it, people that take illegal drugs are criminals already.
Secondly, how is it criminalising being under the influence of drugs? it is criminalising driving whilst under the influence of drugs. There is a *big* difference.
The obvious analogy is alcohol. The current drink-driving laws don’t make being boozed up illegal but they do make it illegal to drive with over a certain amount of alcohol in your blood.
Is this cunt seriously advocating repealing the drink-drive laws?
Whoever from Transform let this dickhead loose in front of a microphone must’ve been off their head.
Two more people have resigned from the drugs advisory council in solidarity for Professor Nutt…
Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned todayin protest at Alan Johnson’s treatment of Professor David Nutt. Another member told the Guardian that the experts were “planning collective action” against Johnson, adding: “Everybody is devastated. We’re all considering our positions.”
Nutt said today that there was “no future” for the council in its present form and it is thought the group’s members may use a meeting next Monday to announce a mass resignation.
I would suggest that it needs to be swung on it’s head and it is not the councils’ present form that is at fault, but the governments attitude to it’s advice.
When the evidence is there for all to see that Nutt knew what he was talking about and some jumped up twat that wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow says ‘No, you’re wrong’ because the evidence conflicts with policy, then we’re all a little bit fucked, really.
What you make of it if Alan Johnson had made these decisions?
– Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’
– Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.
– Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.
– Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.
Because that is what he has done. It is all well and good having a policy on something, but when the evidence shows something is not as bad, or as good, as was previously thought, then surely the only thing to do is modify that particular policy.
Lord Winston makes an obvious point…
I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn’t dismiss it so lightly
Exactly. MPs’ deal with a huge range of subjects and can’t, and shouldn’t, be expected to know about everything. Alan Johnson is not an expert on the effects of drugs, just like David Cameron is not an expert on the problems of the working class. That is where the role of expert advisers come in, to tell politicians what is happening, so they can then figure out how to deal with it. It is one thing if the advice is a bit ambiguous, then fair enough, but in a case like this drugs one, where the expert says that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis, where is the justification for not lowering classification of cannabis? There is none. Johnson was either a) indulging in his own prejudices or b) unable to deviate from policy that it makes a mockery of the whole fucking system.
It could be Alan indulging himself, but then the policy is the American led pointless ‘War on Drugs’, which for twenty years or so has achieved fuck all except divert funds and effort away from areas that would help.
Kevolution says that this episode…
…highlights a bigger issue, that of the state of our democracy. In all the big decisions, the government either tell us we don’t know enough and that if we knew what they did we would understand (but they can’t show us the evidence as it is too sensitive), or they ignore the evidence and just do what they want. They are no longer representing us, they are just setting forth their own agenda’s
And there’s the nub of it. They no longer represent us.
How do we fix this? I dunno except that it won’t be sorted out by a general election*.
*That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother to vote. If I lived in the right place I would vote for D-Notice
