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Drugs and the death penalty: a non-wailing liberal speaks

I’ve blogged previously on the insane nature of the UK’s drugs laws; laws that can criminalise people who have done no harm to anyone but themselves and which serve to exacerbate the problem they allegedly seek to prevent. The problems caused by ‘illegal’ drugs are almost entirely caused by their very illegality, rather than their pharmacological actions. Those seeking drugs other than nicotine and alcohol have to brave a world of variable supply, where the active drug may be ‘cut’ with any number of dangerous substances, obtaining the drug means dealing with often violent criminals and where due to their illegal nature drugs are sold at such a premium price that addicts have to turn to crime to pay for them.  As in 1920’s America, prohibition doesn’t stop people using drugs, it simply turns the market into the personal fiefdom of the gangsters. A market that is now worth 5% of the world’s economy – and rising every year.

These facts of life seem to have passed by many of the journalists and politicians of the right, none more so than Leo McKinstry. His article in today’s Daily Mail (find it if you want, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of a link) rivals Jan Moir’s disgraceful denunciation of Stephen Gately earlier this year. McKinstry starts by praising China for executing Akmal Shaikh, a man convicted of drug smuggling, but who also seems to have suffered from mental health problems, which included believing that a bunch of eastern European gangsters could make him a pop star in China.

“My regret is not over tough action by Beijing, but the fact that we in this country do not possess the moral clarity or strength of purpose to deal ruthlessly with drug peddlers and other enemies of our society.The British government, with its prattle about human rights, likes to think a refusal to use capital punishment is a badge of a civilised society. The truth is the willingness to execute dangerous criminals is a sign of compassion. It means a government is determined to protect the vulnerable and maintain morality.”

But China is hardly the caring, sharing nation that McKinstry would have us believe. Their policies are harsh and authoritarian to anyone who steps out of line by having more than one child, wanting the freedom to surf the internet, talk to foreigners or seek a free Tibet. More than three quarters of all the world’s judicial executions take place in China, for crimes which include fraud and tax evasion. Maybe McKinstry would like to see that policy extended here for example to failed bankers?

A civilised society does not see the taking of a life as the right step in any judicial situation. Compassionate Conservative Cameron has also condemned Shaikh’s execution – I know he’s joined Eric Pickles’ love-bombing of the LibDems, but he’s hardly a screaming liberal. A civilised society does not try to limit the freedoms of the individual. Taking drugs is only a crime because we have decided that it should be so. The real crimes are those committed by drugs barons to retain and increase their business and on a lower level, those acommitted by addicts to fund their habits.

But McKinstry has the moral bit between his teeth and continues:

“It is no coincidence Britain was at its most peaceful and crime-free in the Forties and Fifties, when we still had the death penalty.”

But Britain has had the death penalty for most of its history, but crime and lawlessness were rampant for most of that time. Any educated view of Victorian cities would show that outside the upper classes violent crime and drunkenness were a part of everyday life. Yet McKinstry uses a couple of so-called ‘golden decades’ to represent the perfection of life before the Pill and rock & roll – and the abolition of the death penalty – leading to the end of the world as we know it.

“Since murderers could no longer be hanged, sentences for all other crimes had to be lowered commensurately. The result is the near-anarchy we see today, where serial offenders continually escape custody and rates of violent crime soar.”

Anarchy is a system of non-government. The government of the UK has edged ever closer to authoritarianism, the enemy of anarchy, placing more and more controls on everyday life. Normally the Daily Mail likes to shout about this nanny statism – it must be the Editor’s day off today … 

“Far from condemning cannabis and cocaine, our achingly liberal youth culture glamorises their possession. Vacuous supermodel Kate Moss was caught using cocaine by undercover reporters, most of the fashion world rallied behind her with a sense of moral indignation, protecting her lucrative contracts and behaving as though she were a victim.”

I can’t say I am a follower of the fashion scene, but those who are say that Kate Moss kept her contracts because she is a bloody good model, one who is always on time and performs perfectly. Drugs don’t seem to have stopped her staying at the top of a fickle profession. And yes, she was a victim in a way, a victim of our prying paparazzi and their tabloid paymasters. There does not appear to be any evidence that Moss has damaged anyone but herself by her drug taking.

“Similarly, drug-addled singers Amy Winehouse and George Michael have been lionised by the music establishment.”

Not for their drug taking though, but for being wonderful performers and entertainers.

McKinstry finds several reasons why Shaikh was simply a bad man who deserved to die.

“He was once fined £10,000 for hounding a woman he had recruited as his secretary, while it is telling that his former first wife refused to join the campaign for a reprieve.”

So all those guilty of sexual harassment deserve to die? I thought the Mail was opposed to political correctness? And on the latter point, I don’t suppose Princess Diana would have been keen to give Prince Charles a character reference.

“In China, the death penalty can be invoked against anyone carrying more than 50g of drugs – and that is one obvious reason why China, proportionally, has nothing like the drugs problem that we have in Britain. Serious dealers and abusers know they could be looking down the barrel of a gun if they are caught.”

Yes, what the country really needs is a culture of Orwellian terror, submission and almost summary justice with mandatory penalties. I wonder who else is on McKinstry’s ‘little list’ of people not like him who ‘would not be missed’? Ah yes:

“The drug-fuelled, crime-ridden, welfare-dependent, fear-filled inner city housing estate in modern Britain is far more savage than any place of execution in China for a trafficker of human misery.”

Look out deprived inner cities, the axe man cometh, or at least his modern equivalent – the man with the syringe of lethal dose barbiturate and potassium chloride. Does this man ever think of anyone except himself and any interests except his own?

I’m proud to be a liberal, but I’ve never been called wailing in my life – and I’m not expecting anyone who knows me to start now. Shouting maybe, bloody minded probably, assertive almost certainly. But to McKinstry and his ilk, anyone who shows compassion is obviously weak, wailing and not to be listened to. Well I’m proud to live in a country that is brave enough to not have the death penalty. A country where on the whole we seek to treat mentally ill people with thought and care. Akmal Shaikh was not a drugs baron, or a dangerous criminal. He was a mere pawn in an international industry where the stakes are high. Killing him won’t stop the drugs trade and it won’t make the world or the UK a safer place. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot – or a troll.

Related posts:

1. Now the drugs laws don't work (they just make it worse)*
2. High on drugs, yet soft on drivers?
3. One law for Gary McKinnon – another for Akmal Shaikh?