Nice People Don't Ban Adverts

There are many different types of censorship operating in this country. I've only just come to realise how many different tools are at the disposal of our rulers, and how many they use on a day-to-day basis.

For starters there’s the very obvious type of censorship, increasingly regularly used by the Government; quite simple, straightforward and in your face - the “Say-that-and-we’ll-lock-up”-type thing. Examples of this are specific laws against inciting mass murder and so on. This is Censorship By Decree.

Towards the other end of the scale there is censorship on the basis of social acceptability – the “Everyone-will-look-very-shocked-and-uncomfortable-and-say-‘Oooo-you-can’t-say-that’” form. Irish jokes probably fall into this category (although maybe you could be thrown into prison for telling one these days, who knows ?) This category of censorship usually originates from government or from the Establishment more generally, because they set the tone, but they don't actually impose it on us formally. Instead they seek – usually over a period of time - to create an atmosphere in which certain opinions are deemed "unacceptable". This, in which the Government try to get us to do their dirty work for them - is altogether a more subtle form of censorship than the type that ends up in criminal convictions; I’d call this Censorship By Indoctrination.

Somewhere on the middle is something I’m going to call Censorship by Quango; it’s an ever-expanding method to silence people who, in the eyes or our rulers, are off-message, and to my mind it’s the most insidious form of censorship of the lot. It's harder to pin on the Government, and may peopel don't even realise it happens. A pressure group (the Guardian calls it a "charity" but frankly that's bollocks) called Release has just fallen victim to it.

Release put an advert on London buses, bearing the slogan "Nice People Take Drugs". The aim was to point out over a third of adults in England have used illicit drugs, and to generate some debate about the fact that the law is not working. Release believes that there has to be some liberalisation of drugs laws if drug usage is going to be managed. A completely legimimate point of view...or so you might think.

Well, you've guessed it, Release has been told that the adverts have to be taken down. The bus company has taken fright, because they fear controversy and a rap over the knuckles from the authorities. They suspect, and I bet they're right, that if the ads were not taken down, they would be banned anyway. In short they have saved the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) a job.

The bus company are even blaming themselves for the ads' appearance in the first place: "We should have run it past the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)". CAP, for those who are unaware of its existence, is administered by the ASA. In other words, these ads were taken down before they were banned...by a quango.

We now live in an era where unelected quangos such as the Advertising Standards Authority have a phenomenal degree of power over the way companies and organisations communicate with people. I've complained before about their banning of an advert featuring women dressed as schoolgirls and another one plugging a film about shooting people. Make no mistake, these guys are powerful. Without many people realising it, bodies like the CAP and the ASA are vetting what we are allowed to see. When it comes to free speech, they are the Government's secret police force.

So, to all intents and purposes, overnight, and courtesy of an unelected, unaccountable group of government-funded administrators, it's illegal to state the bleeding obvious, namely that not all drug users are thugs and hooligans. Except I'm going to say it anyway. If this blog disappears in a few days' time, you'll know why:

NICE PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS

It's been nice knowing you.

Tablets Of Stone

I heard this man interviewed on the radio this morning. And having done so, I unleashed a stream of language so long, strong and vulgar that I surprised even myself. Why so ?

The man in question is Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents' Association. He was talking about the the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that ecstasy be downgraded from a Class A to a Class B drug.

The Chairman of the ACMD, the unfortunately named Professor David Nutt, had trialed the proposal at the weekend, claiming that taking ecstasy is roughly as risky as getting on board a horse. Whatever the statistical basis of the argument, the message is clear: the Establishment's continued insistence in putting ecstasy in the same bracket as drugs like crack cocaine in just plain daft and not remotely based upon fact or risk. To many of us, his comments were simply common sense. Ludicrously, his candour earned him a rebuke from Jacqui Smith and some campaigners called for him to resign. This morning, post publication of ACMD's report, Ian Johnston waded in with the usual emotional tirade.

"This is not some academic or scientific exercise, this is dealing with people's lives," railed Johnston. "If we downgrade ecstasy, we are in danger of sending mixed messages out to young and vulnerable people". And on the Today Programme, he went on to claim that young people in night clubs are incapable of telling the difference between the risks of taking ecstasy and other Class A drugs. This was when I got seriously angry, because it is absolute and demonstrable tosh.

The point is obvious. Many young people in nightclubs clearly do know the difference in the risks, which is why ecstasy is the most popular illicit drug (police estimate that 5 million tablets are taken every month) and yet causes a such strikingly low level of harm.

Johnston's assertion that downgrading ecstasy would send mixed messages is also complete nonsense. It is far more dangerous to have a banding of illegal drugs which people know to be fundamentally flawed.

The State's attitude to drugs is not particularly based on their danger; it is based on history and what they think they can get away with. If the State thought it could ban alcohol, it would. On the other hand newly available drugs are treated with automatic hostility. The government's position, and its refusal to change outdated and clearly refuted policy seemingly cast in tablets of stone, is irrational.

Why is this important ? Because the war on drugs is lost. The government cannot even control the movement of drugs within the prison system, never mind anywhere itself. The law is widely treated contemptuously or ignored altogether by huge sections of the population, and the artificially high price caused by drugs' status as illegal itself accounts for a huge proportion of the nation's crime. The police are engaged in a constant and soul destroying tail-chasing exercise which sees them trailing in the wake of the suppliers and crisis-managing the antics of the users. To my mind the arguments in favour of widespread legalisation get stronger by the day. In many ways, the ACMD have come up a long way short, because the time has come for liberalisation, and we may as well start with ecstasy. Yes, it causes deaths. Big deal. So does crossing the road.

Whatever the best solution might be, we quite obviously need an entirely different approach, based on an open and honest debate, to which Professor Nutt and his team have at least tried to make some sort of contribution. What we don't need is knee-jerking coppers flying off the handle.