"The time for a serious reappraisal of our drug laws is long overdue."
SCOTLAND'S biggest selling paper, the Daily Record, is trying to stifle rational discussion on how to deal with drug use. It has been running a dangerous and hypocritical "campaign against drugs" for two months. Three weeks ago it called a march for 1 April. The campaign is a cynical attempt to boost circulation.
It lets the politicians and establishment figures who have presided over rising drug use for two decades off the hook. That is why the Tories' leader in Scotland, David McLetchie, can give the campaign his "enthusiastic backing", alongside the leaders of New Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party.
Millionaire bus baron Brian Souter, who tried and failed to get a mass demonstration against equal rights for gays, also backs the Record's march and is providing free transport to it. The Tories and big business did more than anybody else in the last 20 years to create the conditions that allow dangerous drug use to flourish.
Problem drug use rocketed on working class housing schemes in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee in the early 1980s, as recession destroyed people's hopes for a decent life. From there it spread to the most deprived urban and rural parts of Scotland. As the Scottish Drugs Forum, which links drugs advice and research agencies, said in its submission to a Scottish Parliamentary committee last year: "It is abundantly clear that disadvantaged areas with poor housing, poor amenities and high levels of unemployment remain overwhelmingly the areas where drug problems are concentrated. Sadly, the link between drug problems and our most deprived communities has not always been recognised by politicians."
Nor is it recognised by the Daily Record. Its "Charter Against Drugs" does not mention the deprivation that leads to their use. It calls for funding for "anti-drugs HQs" in every community. It does not call for the restoration of local facilities which have been closed through 20 years of cuts.
Instead its campaign focuses on "shopping drug dealers". A similar campaign three years ago led to rival heroin dealers informing on each other. The police arrested dealers of cannabis, a drug which the doctors' British Medical Association and other experts say is one of the least toxic drugs. Months later the remaining heroin dealers filled the gap with cheap drugs. Heroin use increased and the bigtime dealers got richer.
The Record has printed harrowing stories from people whose relatives have died from overdoses or impure drugs. It is making similar tragedies more likely by lumping together cannabis with dangerous drugs. It devoted a whole page and an editorial on Saturday to attacking Tommy Sheridan, the socialist member of the Scottish Parliament, for backing the legalisation of cannabis.
Yet the evidence that cannabis is relatively harmless is so great that even the bishop of Edinburgh and John Orr, chief constable of Strathclyde, are among the figures calling for liberalisation of the law governing it. The Tory Mail on Sunday reported last weekend that Tony Booth, Tony Blair's father in law, had taken cannabis for pain relief, and commented, "The time for a serious reappraisal of our drug laws is long overdue."
The Record is not interested in such a reappraisal. It will not tell you that tobacco kills 120,000 people a year in Britain and alcohol 30,000, while illegal "hard" drugs such as heroin kill about 1,100, and cannabis is not known to kill anyone.
Tony Booth was born in the early 1930's in Crosby, the eldest of three children born to George and Mary Booth. It is unsurprising that a poverty- stricken Liverpool produced strong Socialist leanings in the young Tony which were encouraged by an uncle and resulted in Tony, at the tender age of 13, canvassing in the 1945 general election.
Following a spell of National Service he began acting and, after being spotted by Johnny Speight, became a household name in 'Till Death Us Do Part'.
Tony Booth has had seven marriages or long-term relationships resulting in eight daughters, one of whom is Cherie Blair. There is a certain irony in the fact that the outspoken, deeply committed socialist is now the father-in-law of Tony Blair, the epitome of New Labour.
Now married to Stephanie, an academic, Tony Booth continues to fight the establishment, this time on behalf of 'Grey Power', being instrumental in obtaining better conditions for the pensioners of Britain.
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