Stupid, stupid piece

Philip Seymour Hoffman and a double standard over drugs | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free |

What an air headed piece of writing from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.

An actor dies of (apparently) heroin overdose, and he takes this as an opportunity to lament drugs being criminalised.

Hey, Simon, here's a few points:

*  how would legalisation of heroin have helped Hoffman?   The rich appear to be able to be buy good quality heroin in large quantities.  (If there is any evidence of contamination in Hoffman's heroin, get back to us.)

*  Hoffman's drug addiction was already being treated as a health problem for him, not a criminal one.   He had been into rehabilitation - he had not been referred to police by the staff there.

*  What do you want?  That the rich only inject themselves in safe injecting rooms, like at Kings Cross in Sydney?  You think if there was one of those in New York or LA that rich actors would make their way there daily to shoot up safely?

The fact is, as I have repeated endlessly, for heroin addicts who want help overcoming a dangerous addiction, the addiction has already been treated as a health problem in Australia, and (I am betting) in many Western countries for decades.

Drug reformers are always exaggerating the benefits of their hypothetical legalisation schemes, even for cases for this where the change would seem to make no difference whatsoever.