The latest weapon to be used in Britain in the long-since lost war against drug abuse was the photographs of the body of poor Rachel Whitear, hunched forward on her knees, her face purple from the congealed blood which gravity had gathered there.
These pictures have been widely circulated as a warning to children what drugs can do, and to put them off using narcotics. I sincerely hope that the pictures do this; and I regretfully know that they won't.
It won't take a moderately intelligent teenager to realise that far more people die of alcohol abuse every day than of drug overdoses. Showing a little bit more imagination, the teenager will also come to the conclusion that whereas drugs almost solely kill their users, alcohol also kills large numbers of utterly innocent people - most particularly, victims of drunk drivers.
And photographs of all those dead and mutilated bodies, of the winos lying in their own waste, of the orphaned children gathered at the coffins of their parents: if you showed those to teenagers, do really think these would deter them from resorting to alcohol? Do you think that such aversion therapy actually averts? Is it not, in fact, likely to contribute to a culture of resignation? Will teenagers not actually become brutalised, and even inured to the likelihood of a terrible death as a consequence of their recreations?
Taking risks
Teenagers get pleasure from taking risks. Armies don't appeal to youngsters because they teach them how to arrange flowers and give bedbaths to the aged. Quite the reverse. Hazard is an army's charm. Teenagers - especially male teenagers - want physical uncertainty, and young men, in particular, revel in the intoxicating pleasures of high-speed driving.
Does anyone really believe that the television advertisements which show the catastrophic results of young men speeding - a crashed car full of youngsters, all dead save the driver, paralysed for life; the child who is crushed to death by a somersaulting car driven by a young man who has been drinking - actually cause young men to slow down? Speed is a drug like any other. It should be dealt with like one.
In matters of such drugs - speeding, alcohol and narcotics - it is all a question of supply. Who provides access to any of these recreational drugs, provided you have the money? Well, the Irish State has come up with a unique provision for the supply of the first drug - of them all, the most lethal, not merely for the users, but also for those in their vicinity. Ireland in practice has a policy which allows young persons with no proven driving skills, provided they hold provisional licences, to drive unaccompanied on the public highway in cars and motorbikes of unlimited power. The reality is that the State allows free access to the most indiscriminately lethal drug of all.
Buying alcohol
The State is altogether more censorious about the use of alcohol. You can walk into a council office, obtain a driving licence and drive away, if you are aged 17. But you cannot buy alcohol under the age of 18, and most off-licences and supermarkets insist that their customers must be over the age of 21 before they sell alcohol to them.
Nonetheless, if teenagers wish to get their hands on alcohol, they usually can, and it is all safe. The State takes active measures to assure the quality yet limit the supply of the drug.
For the third category, the unlawful narcotics - which in total kill fewer people than either speed or alcohol - the State has chosen to abandon any attempt to ensure the quality of the drugs, and has handed over control of supply to criminal gangs, who make vast fortunes out of their State-created and State-protected monopoly.
In the organised witlessness which drives State policy in these matters, hard drugs and soft drugs are alike outlawed, are alike driven underground, are alike unguaranteed as to quality, and are alike made all the more expensive because of State decree.
There is no practical logic or intellectual coherence in any of this. More than any other drug available, speed kills. It's no coincidence that one of the most powerful of drugs in the illegal marketplace - methamphetamine - shares its name. Yet unlike the illegal drug, legal speed kills hundreds of innocent and uninvolved people a year in this country, yet it is treated far more benignly than self-administered drugs which at worst hurt only the user.
Tragic outcome
Not that legalisation of drugs of itself would abolish all problems resulting from narcotics abuse, or that Rachel Whitear might not have died had opiate drugs been lawfully available. The same hideous and tragic outcome could equally have resulted if the poor girl had helped herself to sleeping pills from her local pharmacy and a lawful bottle of vodka from the off-licence.
We know that the criminalisation of narcotics has been a massive failure. We also know that the only drug the State actually permits teenagers to consume in public places, where it is most dangerous and often lethal, is velocity. Teenagers are not stupid. They recognise intellectual and moral inconsistency when they see it; and only a cretin would believe that showing teenagers photographs of the dead bodies that result from this inconsistency could possibly serve as an argument in its favour.