Mike - hello.

I would agree with you that drugs are, in general, damaging but we need to keep some sort of perspective on all this.

Firstly, what is a drug? Is it just something you take physically into your body or can it also include the mind-numbing drivel that is fed to you daily through a little box.

You know the sort of thing -  described as "soap operas" they come into your brain via your T.V. and encourage you to emulate a puerile storyline which varies little day by day or week by week; it's always heaviy laden with really quite obscene interpersonal confrontation and violence, usually featuring Tracy and Darren, with Tracy telling Darren to "leave it out", and he responding by telling her she's "just a slag". The working-class names are patronisingly dreamt up by programme makers who are presumably trying to get into the imagined mind-set of their target audience, without any consideration of whether this sort of stuff is actually going on or - even if it is -whether it's wise to keep reinforcing it. Ratings are King in their not-so-wonderful narcissistic world, and it is ultimately us who give them the ratings. Symbiosis between drug pushers and users? Tell me about it. 

Secondly, the ever scandal-hungry media love to portray Howard as a "drug smuggler"; in fact he was an enthusiatic promoter of a substance (and only one substance - marijuhana) for which there is no evidence whatsoever of any significant ill-efects and plenty of evidence of beneficial effects. Half of the present government probably smoked it at university; the other half did so without inhaling apparently - they can't deny they actually smoked it because there are plenty of contemporaries who saw them partaking, but they can claim they didn't go the whole distance, so they are still pure. They took the girl home, but only kissed her on the lips at the door. It's like you always knew - your contemporary high achievers were once the school or college nerds who got skilled at being breathtakingly duplicitous.

You want a rational scientific debate about drugs? It's impossible while everyone seems to go along with the current (mostly American/Puritan) nonsense. You've got to have some determination to look up the figures to find out how many people are damaged by marijuana in comparison with, say, alcohol, that wholly beneficial beverage. If you haven't got that determination you are, frankly, a sheep; you will inevitably be getting your facts from the media (either first or second-hand), and they are in the business of selling their product, not spreading enlightenment.

Lastly Mike, I have to ask you - what do you gain from seeing the other guy as "bad", over and above that it means you don't have to give any issue deeper thought?

Regards

Ross