Drugs

Should we be doing more or less to help to tackle drug addiction? And does addiction even exist? Are addicts just selfish people? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens and the Daily Telegraph’s Damian Thompson enter into a riveting and lively debate on this very matter (1:06). Prompted by Russell Brand’s article in this week’s Spectator magazine, the pair find some common ground but disagree wholly on the very nature of addiction. It gets heated, with Thompson calling Hitchens’ ‘sanctimony’ ‘suffocating’. Here’s a snippet: listen to ‘Hitchens vs. Thompson on addiction, 6 Mar 13’ on Audioboo http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_07032013.m4a Download | iTunes | RSS UPDATE: Peter Hitchens has blogged about his

In this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens takes on the Telegraph’s Damian Thompson about Russell Brand, drugs, and whether addiction even exists. Click here to listen.  The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday. I had received ‘an inconvenient truth’ from a beautiful woman. It wasn’t about climate change (I’m not that ecologically switched on). She told me she was pregnant and it wasn’t mine. I had to take immediate action. I put Morrissey on in my car and as I wound my way through the neurotic Hollywood hills my misery burgeoned. Soon I could no longer see where I ended and the pain

Shadow Defra minister Mary Creagh told MPs today about her fears that a carcinogenic drug commonly used as an anti-inflammatory in horses could have entered the human food chain. Speaking in the Commons, she said: ‘I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone, or bute, a drug which causes cancer in humans and is banned from the human food chain. It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain.’ As I wrote on Coffee House on Tuesday, it was Defra’s decision last autumn to abolish the National Equine Database which has got us into this mess. Previously, the

The news, reported by the New York Times, that Lance Armstrong is preparing to confess his sins reminds me of this passage from the Book of Daniel: Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Remember, however, that golden-sunned afternoon in Paris in the summer of 2005. On the Champs-Elysees Lance Armstrong, the undisputed titan of his era, stands

In one sense, I have some sympathy for Lance Armstrong. He has been hounded by the American anti-doping agency USADA who, like other federal agencies, are remorseless foes. Once they have their hooks in you they never let go. The usefulness of their investigations is another matter. Even so, Armstrong’s declaration that enough is enough and that he will no longer bother to defend himself against doping charges will doubtless be seen as a capitulation. Most people, I suspect, will take his silence as an admission of guilt. So it really wasn’t just about the bike, was it? Apparently not. The evidence against Armstrong may still – as far as

The Chinese have excelled at London 2012, much to the annoyance of their Western rivals. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the claims against swimmer Ye Shiwen reflect irrational suspicion of her country. Here is an edited version of Ross’s article (you can read the full version here): The story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympics but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in Olympic history. I refer,

I like Ken Clarke. He remains a Class A act in a government that could do with more heft and bottom. So there’s that. And his candid admission that the War on Drugs is a failure is welcome. Alas, even Ken can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge that the only thing madder than continuing a mad policy is continuing a mad policy even after you’ve admitted it’s mad. Still, here’s Ken: ‘We have been engaged in a war against drugs for 30 years. We’re plainly losing it. We have not achieved very much progress. The same problems come round and round. I have frankly conceded that policy has not been

What is the best way to describe families who hitherto have been known by the horrible and demeaning term &”problem” families? These are families full of either psychotic, bad or simply anti-social people – kids who play truant, or smash stuff up, or stab people, skaghead parents who burgle and thieve, that sort of thing. How about Dysfunctional Monkeys? Or Hopeless Bastards?  Hertfordshire County Council has come up with the answer – henceforth these fine people will be known officially throughout the county as ‘thriving’ families, instead. Yes, that’s right – ‘thriving’. Excellent. A council spokesman said that the name change was intended to ‘achieve a more positive and aspirational