The Quiet Road

George Monbiot has written an excellent piece in The Guardian about the unsustainable nature of the modern fishing industry and the destruction it is wreaking on our oceans (Trawlermen cling on as oceans empty of fish – and the ecosystem is gasping).

The comments that follow the article are fairly predictable and fall into two broad categories. The first — and largest group — expressing their agreement with Monbiot and adding their voice to a collective lament about the stupidity of humanity. The second, smaller group, grudgingly admitting that Monbiot has a point (his article largely states obvious truths and refrains from making too many value judgments of the kind that provoke the typical Monbiot-backlash) but bringing up “the tragedy of the commons” to nip in the bud any notion that the reason for this ecological destruction might be free markets, capitalism or the profit motive. In fact, they reason, it’s only happening because we’re not capitalist enough!

The argument is a simple one. Because the fishermen don’t own the oceans, they have no incentive to take care of it. The answer, therefore, is to privatise it. So long as it’s just some indefineable collective thing… “nature”, for want of a better word… people have no interest in protecting it. As soon as it is turned into property, on the other hand, it becomes important enough for the owners to preserve.

Tim Worstall‘s comment sums this position up succinctly:

Yes, it’s the Tragedy of the Commons and as Garrett Hardin pointed out the only way to solve it is to apportion property rights. We can see that the bureaucratic apportionment of quotas doesn’t work for public choice reasons. We thus need to move to the alternative system, direct ownership for the long term of the fishing rights by the fishermen.

Tim Worstall

I’ve gone over that comment maybe half a dozen times, and I state without exaggeration that it is one of the most depressing statements I’ve ever read. Partly because of the sentiment it expresses and the profound disrespect for nature as a thing in itself that it accepts without resistance — indeed appears to embrace — but mostly because it may well be true. At least in the context of modern civilisation.

To me, the real tragedy of the commons is that we have come to think in such terms.

Unlike almost every other human culture that has ever existed (unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the few exceptions are the “civilised” or “city-building” cultures), we no longer have a sane relationship with nature. The Hopi people didn’t need to apportion property rights to know it was a bad idea to shit in the stream they drank from. There was a basic but very deep understanding that nature — the environment — was a large system of which they were merely a part. This leads to the, I would have thought, blindlingly obvious conclusion that any activity which is clearly destructive to the larger system, is almost inevitably going to be destructive to the culture… the people… the person carrying out the destructive act. And this is the case even if the impact is not immediately apparent. With cities (or perhaps it was large-scale agriculture, it’s hard to know) came the tendency to see a separation between humanity and nature.

To me this represents nothing less than a collective psychosis. A “psychotic break” in as literal a sense as that term could ever be used.

A simple analogy

It’s not at all difficult to follow. Just as an individual human being is part of a wider system (society), so our culture is part of a wider system (the environment*).

Now, imagine an individual who suffers from a delusion which convinces him or her that they are not part of society; that they exist separate and distinct from it; and in fact, it exists simply to satisfy their demands. This belief is so strong that they view and treat all of society, including the very people themselves, as personal property to be exploited as they see fit and without regard for any consequences to that society.

Such a person may well treat others acceptably because they do not wish to damage their property, but this isn’t an indication that they’re not psychotic. And nor is it a guarantee that they won’t cause a considerable amount of suffering with their actions if given free rein. I would certainly question the wisdom of anyone who felt the best thing for all concerned would be to provide them with the tools to act out their delusion and treat society as personal property.

Furthermore, such a person is almost certainly not well-qualified to judge the amount of damage they are doing and, therefore, cannot even be trusted to know when they have begun to threaten their own survival. Self-destructive behaviour is hardly unknown amongst those experiencing psychosis.

A way out?

I’m pretty much convinced that we’ve passed the point where we can simply “reinject” some sense of reality into modern civilisation — at least within the required timespans. Relearning an appreciation of nature as part of us, and of us as part of nature, probably can’t be done quickly enough.

On the other hand, we have actually developed a system, imperfect though it is, which allows us to regulate our collective behaviour with a degree of success… the law. See, when Tim Worstall insists that “the only way to solve” this problem is to apportion property rights, he is clearly mistaken. It would be theoretically possible to declare the oceans to be… oh, I dunno, a Vital Element of Our Survivial? (VEOS? Someone can come up with a better term). A sustainable fishing strategy would be developed (erring always on the sustainable side) and society would employ fishermen to carry it out.

And when Tim speaks of “public choice” being the primary reason why such a strategy might fail, then he may, in practice, be right. But it is clear to me that it’s wrong to allow a psychotic individual to seriously harm themself out of respect for their choice. We understand that there is a high enough probablility that they aren’t currently capable of sound judgment, to warrant intervention out of concern for their well-being.

Likewise, if the public demand fish at an unsustainable rate, then we’re not acting in sound (collective) mind. We need to make it clear to everyone that demanding resources at an unsustainable rate represents a collective madness. We need to make it clear that insofar as morality is linked with the prevention of human suffering, such demands are deeply immoral. We need to make it clear that while such ways of thinking may well be ingrained, we can no longer allow them to dictate our behaviour in the world. We need to ensure that everyone knows new rules — a kind of imposed collective super-ego, if you will — are now required to govern our interaction with the environment.

And yes, those found acting outside the rules would be viewed and treated the same way we would treat anyone who seeks to endanger the survival of millions.

I tend not to get involved in the Blog Wars very much. I can’t claim to be a completely conscientious objector, though, as I have indulged in the occasional bit of Oliver Kamm-baiting in the past (just last week he described the invasion of Iraq as “nearly a failure“. Weirdo).

All the same, one thing that’s guaranteed to pique my interest and provoke my contempt is the news that one blogger has set a lawyer on another because of something they wrote. That’s the behaviour of a low-life. And it doesn’t surprise me to discover (via Justin) that it is the frankly absurd Guido Fawkes who has got lawyers involved. I can’t claim to be too familiar with the chap but I did read some of his blog ages ago and I’ve seen his silly appearances on Newsnight. He comes across as an utter arse, and a long way up himself.

Anyways, Tim Ireland at bloggerheads has begun to receive threatening letters from Guido’s lawyer because of something he wrote (for more info on the specifics of the case, follow that link).

Now, I should point out that the actual details of the case are rather dull, and — to my mind — completely ridiculous. It’s all very petty, quite abstract, and a long long way from the worst thing Guido’s been publicly accused of. In reality, Tim’s being targeted because he’s been a regular thorn in the side of Guido and his coterie, not because of anything he’s said on this occasion. This really annoys the hell out of me… using a lawyer as an attack-dog… legally harrassing* someone you don’t like because you can afford to. It’s nasty.

Tim’s always seemed like a good guy. Occasionally I think he can lose a little perspective and I’ve disagreed with some of his methods in the past (as he knows). All the same, he’s on the right side of the barricades, so to speak. And Guido’s bullying tactics are an outrage.

I may be wrong here, but I’m fairly certain that an historic first was recently marked. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, actually made a half-decent proposal. I believe it’s his first since taking office, but I’m open to correction on that.

I’m afraid he didn’t surrender himself to the International Court of Human Rights for his involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq. No, what he did was a little less dramatic, but a good idea all the same; he backed a radical change in the way organ donation works in the UK.

As it stands now, and this is the case in Ireland too, a person must place their name on the organ donation registry if their organs are to be eligible for use in transplant surgery post mortem. Brown appears to be pushing towards a system of “presumed consent” whereby your organs are automatically considered available unless you place your name on an “opt-out” registry, or unless your next of kin lodges an objection at the time of your death.

This is a great idea. Over the course of a decade it will save ten thousand people from a painful and premature death and will relieve the suffering of more than a hundred thousand others. In my view, Gordon Brown should be strongly supported on this issue (at the very least, wait until he’s talking about something else before you throw those eggs). It represents a positive step for British society and, like one or two other social policies which have been running successfully for years in the Netherlands, should really be adopted here in Ireland and elsewhere around the world.

Naturally, there are those who object. And seeing as how I’m usually on the side of the objectors when it comes to the plans of British Prime Ministers, I’m willing to listen to those objections and see if maybe there’s something I’ve missed. There doesn’t appear to be.

The Libertarian Position

What we do have is an incoherent libertarian position regarding ownership of the body. By “presuming consent”, the state is essentially asserting ownership of a person’s body; an assertion that must be denied. I believe that’s the essence of the libertarian objection, though I’m willing to be corrected on that should a libertarian pass through.

The trouble is, the objection is based upon two fundamental misconceptions.

The first is that ownership extends beyond death. It clearly doesn’t. Upon death, all ownership is transferred. It’s called “inheritance” and we’ve developed all manner of complicated rules by which it occurs. While a person is alive, I believe they should indeed be considered the “owner” of their body (in whatever sense that might mean in this context). This is one of the reasons I feel, for example, that drug prohibition should be opposed, though that’s a subject most right-wing libertarians find it politically expedient to ignore. But once a person is dead…? Well, it is simply not possible for a dead person to own anything. Not even their own body.

The people who are considered legal owners of the body, one supposes, are the next of kin. And rather conveniently, the policy proposes to leave the decision in their hands. They may insist that the body remain intact if that is what they wish. This right is not removed, the next of kin may still assert absolute “ownership” if they choose. And the opt-out registry, just like a will, provides a legal facility to those who may not trust their next of kin (for instance). The libertarian argument is bunk.

And that’s without getting to the second fundamental misconception. Which is, that “the state” is taking ownership of the organs. It’s not. At least, not in any sense that matters. But because “the state” is the big bad wolf of libertarianism, it tends to be crowbarred into a lot of arguments where it doesn’t really belong. It’s a symbol of evil. A rallying point. As such, the emotional power it carries as a symbol is worth deploying even when it lessens the coherence of the argument.

All the same, that’s exactly what it does.

The state is not asserting any ownership at all. It is merely setting the rules by which ownership is transferred. By passing laws, it acts as arbitrator, just as it does in all cases where inheritance laws are complied with.

What I do concede is that right now, the shortage of suitable organs means that a selection process must be undertaken, and in that sense the organs are “allocated” by the state (or a state agency). A side-benefit of this new policy, however, would be to eliminate even that element of “state” intervention. Essentially it would have the practical effect of further liberating the transplant process from politics. You’d imagine that’s the kind of thing that would surely be applauded by libertarians.

Different voices

A successful organ transplant can, in essence, take an organ that was otherwise destined to rot in the ground and instead use it to give life to a dying person. This is about as uncontroversially positive a thing as I can think of. Sure, we can get all abstract about the demographic dangers of medical advancement, and we can question the cost:benefit ratio of transplants as compared with other medical programmes. We can do those things. But when all’s said and done, transplant cases usually boil down to taking an individual whose daily life is characterised by significant physical pain; and relieving them of that pain.

I mean, it’s just your basic Good Thing, and if we can afford it but aren’t doing it because of a shortage of organs, then we need to change that immediately. A system of presumed consent in tandem with the aforementioned opt-outs would be a simple, effective and socially just method of achieving this.

What has frustrated me a little about the debate on this issue, however, hasn’t been the libertarian objection. Instead it’s been the tone of some of those who actually support the policy change. “Living people matter. When you’re dead, you’re dead” was probably the worst offender (unsurprisingly it came from the rather silly, and mystifyingly well-regarded by some, Polly Toynbee) but even the good guys got in on the action as Justin illustrates in “Monkeys and the organ minder“.

Both articles are guilty of one of the cardinal sins of social policy debate. And they’re symptomatic of a wider trend on this issue. They propose (or in this case, support) a policy without giving any real thought to the impact of the policy on those directly affected. Indeed, they go so far as to caricature and trivialise them. I find this problematic.

We’re dealing here with a significant shift in social policy that will have an impact on two groups of people. Firstly and most obviously, those in need of transplanted organs. The policy is essentially (and rightfully so) tailored to them and is primarily aimed at serving their interests. However the second group of people who will be routinely and significantly affected by this policy is the recently bereaved. This is problematic because we’re talking about a group of people who will be under great stress and prone to irrationality. People who are potentially experiencing the worst trauma of their life. We need to place a sensitivity to this fact right at the core of our thinking on this issue. And those who fail to do this are, to be honest, speaking in a voice unpleasant to my ears.

The Psychoanalytic Position

In 1917 Sigmund Freud published Mourning and Melancholia (it can be found in Volume 14 of the Complete Works). It’s a landmark paper and represents the culmination of two years working towards an understanding of grief and depression (to use modern terminology). Despite its age, however, I contest that it is as good an explanation of the grieving process as exists…

It is also well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment. We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful.
[…]
In what, now, does the work which mourning performs consist? I do not think there is anything far-fetched in presenting it in the following way. Reality-testing has shown that the loved object no longer exists, and it proceeds to demand that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object. This demand arouses understandable opposition — it is a matter of general observation that people never willingly abandon a libidinal position, not even, indeed, when a substitute is already beckoning to them. This opposition can be so intense that a turning away from reality takes place and a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis. Normally, respect for reality gains the day. Nevertheless its orders cannot be obeyed at once. They are carried out bit by bit, at great expense of time and cathectic energy, and in the meantime the existence of the lost object is psychically prolonged. Each single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it. Why this compromise by which the command of reality is carried out piecemeal should be so extraordinarily painful is not at all easy to explain in terms of economics. It is remarkable that this painful unpleasure is taken as a matter of course by us. The fact is, however, that when the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited again.

Sigmund Freud | Mourning and Melancholia

We can quibble about the details and about the terminology (I take a much more Jungian view of libido, for instance, than many psychoanalysts) but ultimately it’s a pretty damn accurate description of the grieving process, as I feel certain anyone who has gone through it will attest. We deny the death. Initially it may be quite overt… “No, you’ve got that wrong. I don’t believe you!” even though we have no reason in the world to doubt the news we’ve been given. Usually that overt denial passes quite rapidly. In Freud’s words, “respect for reality gains the day”. Beyond that, it can take a long time to ‘carry out the work of mourning’. Our unconscious may be filled with memories of the deceased, and each one requires re-evaluation based on this new information. Much of this is indeed unconscious, but plenty of it isn’t. We experience it as dreams of the person, and as a tendency to “think about them” a lot in the immediate aftermath of their death. Notably, as time passes, those thoughts become less painful.

This is how we grieve, and any social policy designed to deal with grieving people needs to take it into account. If it doesn’t, then it runs the risk of being a monstrous attack on the vulnerable. What’s vital to take away from this account of the grieving process is that there is a very real period during which a recently bereaved person will overtly deny the death. In most people it lasts mere seconds… long enough to say “I don’t believe it…” then Bang! it hits you. But in others it can drag on. This isn’t a choice they make, and it doesn’t make them ‘perverse’ or ‘weird’ in the words of one commentator. It’s how grief works in some people. Polly Toynbee talks about the forces of superstition and reaction and about overcoming them with the “spirit of enlightenment”. What? Overcoming human grief? What’s next? A war on terror?

The point is that a grieving person may well suffer a total failure in reality-testing. This happens often enough that we consider it a natural reaction to bereavement, albeit at the extreme end of such reactions. Such people may — and often do — fixate upon the integrity of the body and insist that the dead person will soon awaken. This period may continue beyond the time at which organ harvest becomes impossible. And an attempt to interfere with this process could well be needlessly* traumatic for the already traumatised person.

Now, nobody is suggesting that these people be deprived of the right to “opt-out”. I’m not trying to build a straw man here. I’m merely suggesting that those who speak in tones close to contempt about the irrational behaviour of the recently bereaved are failing to demonstrate the sort of basic compassion that should inform any discussion of social policy in this area.

First up, a cautionary note; this blog post may end up somewhere a wee bit extreme. I’d like to stress that it’s a thought-experiment and I’m certainly not proposing policy here. Thankfully my readership is small and consists almost entirely of members of the choir, so there’s little chance of misinterpretation and/or accusations of apologism for terrorism.

Secondly, let’s state an assumption. If you don’t share this assumption, then the question raised by this thought-experiment isn’t really aimed at you (though you may wish to pay attention to how others respond — not here but in general — over the next few years).

The assumption: Climate Change is a reality. The emission of large quantities of ‘greenhouse gasses’ (primarily, though not exclusively CO2) by human civilisation is resulting in a warming of the atmosphere. This warming is having a whole bunch of both predictable (melting polar ice) and unpredictable (shifting weather patterns) effects. But given just the predictable effects of atmospheric warming, we have good reason to expect significant death and destruction as a direct result.

[Note: for brevity, when capitalised, “Climate Change” specifically refers to ‘anthropogenic climate change’]

Anyway that’s the assumption. If you don’t share it, then could I ask you to perhaps hold off with your objections for a while? I’m writing a piece specifically on the subject of Climate Change Denial and I don’t want to get into it here. For this piece, we’re running with the assumption.

We’re Looking Out For The Whales

Merrick recently drew my attention to news that a Norwegian whaling vessel had been sunk by anti-whaling activists. I firmly believe that most of my readers will whisper a quiet “nice one!” when reading that story. The activists scuttled the ship while nobody was aboard, and did it in such a way that it took four hours to sink, so even if someone had been, the chances of them being in any real danger was negligible. It’s a perfect piece of non-violent direct action and I believe most people who oppose whaling would consider it quite legitimate. If I’m wrong about that then I guess it makes my views more extreme than I imagined, and it also makes the rest of this blog post entirely irrelevant. Sorry about that.

It goes without saying that I’m using a specific definition of “non-violent” action here. Clearly there’s a definition of the word “violent” that includes property damage. But I’m appealing to that a long-established principle within political activism that presumes ‘the tools of tyranny’ to be fair game. And yes, there are those who argue that “the police force” or “the army” or “management” are actually ‘tools of tyranny’, but as I understand it and use it here, non-violent political action includes a clear prohibition on interpersonal violence; “no action aimed at (or that has a significant likelihood of) causing physical harm to people”.

So yeah, assuming I’m not wrong, and most people see the anti-whaling action as legitimate, it raises an awkward question for me. Give it some thought, always bearing in mind the following three items:

1. the unprecedented death and destruction that will result should we be insufficiently aggressive in tackling the threat of Climate Change;
2. the outcome of the Ploughshares Legal Case, where peace activists wrecked a military aircraft built by BAe for the Indonesian airforce, but were acquitted in a British court when they successfully argued they were “preventing a greater crime”;
3. the anti-whaling action mentioned above, where property destruction was achieved without endangering people, and which I contest most readers will feel is legitimate (on whatever “gut level” personal morality works).

The question is actually pretty obvious isn’t it? Context is everything, and by placing next to one another those three mildly controversial points, I pose a highly controversial dilemma. Specifically: are civil airliners, when grounded for maintenance (read, and take seriously, my previous point regarding non-violent direct action), entirely legitimate targets for acts of sabotage? And I’m talking here about legally legitimate as well as ethically. Combine items 1 and 2, above.

The Irish government, for instance, claims to accept the findings of the IPCC. However, the policies being implemented by our new greener government don’t even begin to reflect this. The same can be said of almost every government.

So if I can demonstrate (by the government’s own words) that Climate Change is a massive threat. If I can prove beyond question that current policies do not address the threat. Then if I show up at an aircraft maintenance facility and damage a 737 beyond repair, have I not done something both ethically and legally acceptable? Better yet, what if I and 5000 of my friends show up and wreck the entire facility? How can the destruction of commercial aircraft not be seen as direct action against Climate Change… as an attempt to prevent a greater crime?

Now, my suspicion is that while almost all of you were with me on the whaling ship thing, that I may have lost a few with the mass assault on the assets of the airline industry. It seems strangely less reasonable when it’s something familiar to us, something part of our lives, even though it may objectively be doing more damage. So it’s with some trepidation that I propose my real question…

Why stop with the planes… what about parked cars?

Is it possible that a crucial piece of information has been omitted from this BBC news report? Because taken at face value, the report appears to be stating that a man has been handed a 3 year suspended prison sentence and placed on the sex-offenders register for… well, for masturbating in his own room. I can only assume that he did something else as well. Because if the facts are as reported, then Sheriff Colin Miller (who passed judgement in the case) needs to retire immediately as he’s clearly not in possession of the required sense of proportion demanded by his job. I also suggest that a team of detectives is hired to dig into Sheriff Miller’s past and unearth evidence that the good Sheriff has “had a swift one off the wrist” in his own home at some point in his life (because, and here I speak with utter certainty, he has done) and then get him slapped onto the sex-offenders register along with the poor sod he’s decided to persecute.

Hell, why not put everyone who ever got themselves off in the privacy of their own home on the damn register? To save some time, just grab the electoral register and rename the thing. Let’s ensure it’s entirely useless, why don’t we?

There’s a comical slant to this story of course, and because the comical aspect is what caught the Beeb’s eye, that’s what has been emphasised. But beneath the odd imagery and the prurient sniggering there’s a very serious story here that’s being completely ignored… a man has been placed on the sex-offenders register for masturbating in private. How is that even possible!?

The bicycle is clearly the problem

According to the BBC report, the victim of this outrageous perversion of justice, a Mr. RS, returned to his own room in the homeless hostel in which he was living. So while I know nothing about RS, from the outset it sounds to me like he’s already having a bit of a crappy time of it just now. He was a bit drunk, but not completely out of it. He certainly had wits enough about him to lock the door to his room. So this was no deliberate, or even oblivious, act of exhibitionism. RS was in his own space behind a locked door. He was only discovered when a member of the hostel staff entered the room using a master key.

The next bit is what propelled the tale into the media; rather than indulging in a… to put it bluntly, “a traditional wank”, RS had found some feature on his bicycle which, when rubbed against, apparently did the job for him. Now, the problem with that is the human imagination is liable to run riot with that image. This can’t be helped, it’s intrinsically bizarre. To me though, it’s very much on the comical side of bizarre. Sheriff Miller somehow places it on the threatening and morally dangerous side.

But ultimately, the fact that it’s a bicycle is utterly irrelevant. It’s an inanimate object, and given that sex-toys are legal in Scotland and assuming there’s no legal regulations regarding their shape (I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s hardly a major assumption), then pleasuring oneself with an inanimate object is not against the law. Had RS been using a blow-up sex doll, would he have been placed on the sex-offenders register? If RS had been female and had been using a vibrator, would she find herself with a three-year suspended sentence? Indeed, does Sheriff Miller’s judgement set a precedent effectively outlawing dildos in Scotland?

And that’s not a rhetorical question. This is a man who has been placed on the sex-offenders register. It’s as far from a laughing matter as it’s possible to get, despite the whole bicycle-as-sex-toy incongruous imagery. Seriously, try and imagine having to go through life with that on your CV. It’s got to be tough to know the right time in a new relationship to announce that particular bit of news… “Oh by the way, I won’t be able to take part in any Parent-Teacher Association stuff…”

Most of us assume that the sex-offenders register is used to keep track of rapists and child-molesters. And in my view there is merit in doing that. I believe that some forms of criminal behaviour reveal pathologies that are unlikely to have been addressed by a prison sentence. So if a person is found guilty of sexually assaulting a child, then that fact should be taken into account if that person applies for a job at a school later in life, even if they’ve technically “paid their debt to society” with a prison sentence.

However the sex-offenders register becomes worse than useless if people like RS (“guilty” of using a sex toy in his own locked room) are side-by-side on the list with the child abusers and serial rapists. It ceases to be a reliable list used to identify potentially dangerous individuals, and becomes nothing more than a stick used by the judiciary to beat whomsoever they please. A new way for Sheriff Miller to heap yet more misery into our already heavily-laden world.

UPDATE (16:23): Great minds… and all that.

With the obvious exception of elected politicians, a significant majority of the people who smoke cannabis will enjoy it. It’s a biochemical thing. Dopamine and what have you. It’s like eating chocolate… for most of us it’s an actively pleasurable experience. But you’ll meet people during your life who simply don’t like the taste of chocolate all that much. Which is fair enough… maybe it’s blue cheese that floats their boat. Whatever.

Of the majority who do enjoy a toke or a toblerone, almost all will do so in moderation — or at the very least know their limits. Very few will become chronic pot heads and/or morbidly obese due to yorkies. If you doubt this (with regards to pot anyways) then I suggest you read Tim Worstall’s fine examination of the statistics. Despite the large number of recent newspaper headlines warning of the sinister harm wrought by cannabis, it turns out that a tiny percentage of regular users experience that harm… somewhere between 0.01% and 0.2%. Now, I don’t know what percentage of regular chocolate consumers suffer serious ill-health because of chronic usage. Whether it be diabetes or high cholesterol or the myriad other problems we’re told are associated with bad diet. But I do know that nobody, quite rightly, is suggesting that possession of a bar of dairy-milk should be considered a criminal offence. Imagine sending someone to share a cell with a rapist because they were caught eating chocolate.

My chocolate analogy also has another aspect to it… there are those (the UK Conservative Party for instance) who still trot out the “gateway theory” as a rationale for criminalising cannabis. The theory being that those who use cannabis will be more likely to use harder drugs due to some undefined biochemical conditioning that occurs in the brain. This is simply absurd and — when taken to a logical conclusion — rests upon the assumption that our neurochemistry is aware of which drugs are legally proscribed and which can be legally prescribed.

Seriously… think about it…

– “Cannabis leads to heroin!”
Wow, really? So does alcohol lead to heroin?
– “Of course not!”
Well, does tobacco lead to cannabis maybe?
– “Not a bit of it! Cannabis leads to heroin which leads to speed, ecstasy and cocaine.”
Er… do any of them lead to prozac?

In reality the “cannabis gateway effect” (which does exist in many places) has been demonstrated to be sociological rather than biological. It is the prohibition of cannabis which places it into the same supply-system as the harder drugs. Those who smoke cannabis are more likely to have regular encounters with those who sell hard drugs than those who do not. It’s all quite easy to understand when you actually think about it rationally for a second.

But yeah, the chocolate thing. You see, there’s a very coherent and convincing argument to suggest that some kind of “psychological / biological gateway” theory may have merit, though not in the sense the tories would have you believe. Essentially our very early experiences with drugs will shape — not only psychologically, but also neurochemically — our relationship with drugs throughout our lives. And, so far as western culture is concerned, the first substance most of us encounter that can truly be considered a recreational drug… is chocolate. If you’re interested in this, I recommend Andrew Weil’s From Chocolate To Morphine which is very informative, though he does descend into polemic from time to time.

So much stronger

Another theme in the recent race to see which media outlet can publish the most one-sided drug-policy story, is the claim that today’s pot is vastly more potent than ever before. This claim is false and is a simple result of journalists failing to do any research and instead reprinting “the official line” as fact. Usually the claim rests upon data produced by the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project. However, as this project is funded by, and falls under the jurisdiction of, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse which is itself part of the government’s Drug Policy Office, it’s difficult to conclude that it constitutes “independent” research (the organisation funding it has a clear and overt bias after all).

I too have a clear and overt bias (I’m strongly in favour of significant reform of our drug laws and the controlled legalisation of all currently prohibited drugs) but I hope that the following discussion of cannabis potency will be transparent enough to make my claims relatively uncontroversial.

Firstly let’s establish what is meant by cannabis potency. The composition of any plant is extremely complex with many hundreds, if not thousands, of identifiable constituent chemicals. In the case of cannabis, there’s only one we’re interested in — Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. This is the primary active component; the chemical that gets you high; and the potency of a given sample of cannabis is expressed via the percentage of THC found in that sample.

Now, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA):

Marijuana is much stronger now than it was decades ago. According to data from the Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of commercial-grade marijuana rose from an average of 3.71 percent in 1985 to an average of 5.57 percent in 1998. The average THC content of U.S. produced sinsemilla increased from 3.2 percent in 1977 to 12.8 percent in 1997.

US DEA | Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

Let’s take these figures at face value though, as Brian C. Bennett writes, the methodology used is extremely dubious (I urge you to read the first three paragraphs on that page). Not only that, the DEA have been very selective indeed in the figures used. The comparison of 1977 (3.2%) and 1997 (12.8%) seems extremely dramatic. But if we were to take the figures for 1978 and 1993 (i.e. much of the same period) there’s a clear decline in average potency (from 6.28% to 5.77%). What are we to make of that?

Anyways, taking the figures at face value as I promised to do, the first thing that needs to be pointed out is that they have restricted the study to “U.S. produced sinsemilla”. This is despite the fact that (according to the New York Times magazine, reprinted here):

Fewer than 20 years ago (article published in 1995 – Jim), virtually all the marijuana consumed in America was imported. “Home grown” was a term of opprobrium, “something you only smoked in an emergency,” as one grower old enough to remember put it.

Michael Pollan | Marijuana: America’s #1 Cash Crop

So while modern US-grown cannabis is probably as strong as that grown anywhere else in the world (with perhaps the exception of Thailand), thirty years ago it wasn’t. However, cannabis grown elsewhere and then imported into the USA during the 1970s (or Ireland or the UK) was sometimes just as strong (or almost so) as these supposed new super-skunks* that everyone’s getting into a lather about these days. According to a United Nations survey, for instance, the average potency of Thai cannabis seized in the U.K. in 1976 was 9.3%. And in 1980 the average for both Thai and Indian cannabis (again, seized in the U.K.) was 11%. (source) Neither of these are far from the “new high strength” numbers trotted out by the DEA and subsequently parroted in the media, and as they are average values we can safely assume that some individual samples were even more potent.

Something has changed, however, and that’s the relative availability of stronger cannabis. It’s easier to track down super-skunk today than it was to get your hands on thai-stick in 1977. Thanks to prohibition however, it’s impossible for someone to be aware of the strength of the cannabis they are purchasing. So a person who tends to smoke low-strength ditchweed may get a far stronger batch than they’re used to without being aware of it. As a result their first smoke from it may well be extremely stressful (imagine drinking a pint of beer only to discover afterwards that it had the same alcohol content as wine). Subsequently, however, the smoker will be aware of the higher strength and will simply smoke less of it in a session. Just as a wine drinker consumes less (in fluid ounces) than a beer drinker but still gets the same buzz.

In fact, because a smoker will consume more weak cannabis to get the same buzz as they would from a stronger strain, it’s likely that the weak stuff will have a greater negative impact on their health (through inhalation of more particulates) than the strong stuff. It’s simply misleading to suggest that a person will get higher from smoking stronger pot. The tendency of almost every pot-smoker is to smoke just enough to get them to the comfortable high that they enjoy, and in order to reach that they’ll smoke more or less depending on the potency.

And finally

Unlike many commentators I am completely unsurprised by the news that the UK’s reclassifaction of cannabis from Class B to Class C has been followed by a very significant fall in the number of people using the drug; particularly young people. Nor am I surprised by the news that the government is planning to reverse that policy.

After all, just as elected politicians appear to have a specific brain-chemistry that prevents them enjoying pot, they are also well known to be unable to distinguish between sensible and nonsensical drug policies.

There’s a discussion over at The Sharpener regarding the Feral Teen Menace (TM) which has apparently sprung up in recent years. It seems that the youth of today is uniquely troublesome and all manner of measures are being considered (even if only by authoritarian right-wingers) to deal with them. The tabloids have decided that cheap booze is largely responsible for the problem, and banning the consumption of alcohol in public along with raising the legal drinking age to 21 are just two of the ideas being proposed.

As an aside, I’m mildly amused by the fact that people from the Norman Tebbit end of the political spectrum can propose increasingly heavy restrictions on alcohol consumption in order to deal with modern teens without causing too much of a furore. Yet woe-betide an Islamic scholar who suggests anything of the sort. White right-wingers are simply proposing sensible solutions to a rising tide of lawlessness. Brown moslems, on the other hand, are trying to impose a global caliphate on us all. Go figure.

Anyways, I’m not a fan of alcohol as it happens and haven’t had more than a couple of drinks in the past few years. But that’s purely a biochemical thing (it makes me feel shit these days, where once I found it pleasant) and certainly isn’t an indication of a prohibitionist mindset. Drop round with some pot and see how long it lasts if you don’t believe me. So while a public drinking ban wouldn’t personally impact on me, it’s clearly a ridiculous idea. Criminalising someone for having a cold beer in the park on a warm day just because the tabloids claim the kids are all out of their skulls on alcopops and vandalising bus-shelters is an over-reaction (to put it mildly) and any claims that raising the drinking age to 21 will have a significant impact on crime conveniently ignores the evidence provided to us by the USA.

Incidentally, I have a dare for anyone who genuinely believes that raising the drinking age to 21 is a good idea. Find yourself a twenty-year-old squaddie just returned from a tour in Iraq and tell him he can’t have a pint down his local. If he refuses to listen, then attempt to restrain him. Go on! Do your civic duty!

All the same, I do believe that we are witnessing a major social problem right now and it is manifesting itself most clearly in the youth. The social fabric is indeed beginnning to fray somewhat, and today’s kids do seem less respectful of their own communities than was once the case. Youth crime rates have increased somewhat faster than population and youth suicide is off the scale (that last fact can partly be attributed to a lessening of the social stigma surrounding suicide and a consequent increase in suicides being recorded as such, rather than as “death by misadventure” as was often the case previously, but that’s clearly only part of the explanation).

My own view is that youth crime has little to do with the fact that we allow people to get pissed when they’re eighteen. We’ve been permitting them to do that since Tebbit was a nipper and while the man has clearly spent his life being a menace, even I must concede that he probably wasn’t guzzling white cider and mugging old ladies when he was a teenager.

No, my own view is that our social problems are simply the inevitable consequence of a late-capitalist civilisation that is itself clearly committing suicide. Socialism — for all its many faults — has at its core an attempt to give each individual a stake in a wider society. This is in direct opposition to the individual materialism required by consumer capitalism and instilled in us by a constant barrage of psychologically manipulative media imagery. If people find genuine fulfillment and contentment in the simple things in life… family, friends and a sense of social worth, then any attempt to convince them that fulfillment can only be found via the purchase of a new car or an expensive watch or a holiday in the Seychelles is doomed to failure. Therefore we’ve created a generation who feel utterly detached from society and the comfort, security and contentment it offers. Self-obsessed, self-serving, isolated and unhappy individuals make by far the best consumers. This is just common sense. Why therefore, are we surprised that our civilisation has created them? Or that a widespread sense of social alienation should lead to a lack of respect for that society?

Add to that an awareness of impending environmental catastophe (which, whether you believe it will happen or not, is clearly a significant part of the belief system of modern youth) and you have a recipe for nihilism. We’ve annihilated the future. And people with no future either get angry or they get depressed. The crime / suicide thing.

Now, personally I don’t think there’s much we can do about this. Without a wholescale restructuring of our society, removing the emphasis on personal consumption and attempting to knit back together that social fabric, there’s just no option beyond ever-more authoritarian policies. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have an alcohol-related social problem for instance.

However, one thing struck me about the debate currently taking place at The Sharpener, and I want to focus on it. That’s the idea that the root cause of the Feral Teen Menace is our increasing godlessness. As our culture becomes more secular and religion plays a diminishing role in the lives of individuals, so crime increases.

Perhaps surprisingly, I do think there’s something in this. No, I’ve not recently found Jesus or anything… I actually found him years ago as it happens. He was down the back of the sofa along with a handful of loose change, a broken comb and a silver ring that no bugger could recall having seen before. I lost him soon afterwards though… told him to wait in the car when I went in to buy some cigarette papers and matches and when I came out he’d wandered off. But he’s a grown man so I figured he could take care of himself.

Aaanyways, while pretty much all religious beliefs are obviously irrational, it’s a very blinkered atheist indeed who would insist that religion plays no part in creating a sense of social inclusion. I’m not suggesting that’s a justification for the various evils that god-botherers have unleashed upon the world. It isn’t. And dispelling the superstition and nonsense of religion is clearly a good thing. But there’s a whole baby / bathwater nexus going on that needs to be examined.

See, most of my readers will acknowledge that, on balance, the influence of religion on society is negative. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say “very negative”. Any Christians who are offended by this can take their religion and… forgive me with it. However, it’s not 100% negative. It has certain positive roles to fill, one of which is to offer that sense of social inclusion I mentioned. So while the secularisation of society is, on balance, a good thing; the fact that it has happened without putting alternative systems in place to take over the positive roles once played by religion has led to a number of social problems.

A local example… there’s a hospital in Cork City that I’ve been in more times than I’d like. It used to be run by a religious order but has now been transferred to the state. There’s not a doctor in the place who won’t admit that the levels of hygiene and administrative efficiency have dropped dramatically since the changeover. It seems that a cleaner who believes they are doing God’s work is better at their job than one who is doing it for a paycheque. This is not an argument in favour of religion. It’s an argument in favour of ensuring that people have something other than the minimum wage to inspire them in their work. I’ve no idea what that should be (I doubt it’s “a bit more money” though).

So yeah, religion played a role in providing social inclusion. Now that it no longer functions that way, and we’ve failed to replace it with anything, it simply stands to reason that social inclusion has been negatively affected. To expect otherwise is unrealistic.

However, I decided to put this theory to the test, and the United States is ripe for analysis. Tracking down a state-by-state breakdown of crime statistics is pretty simple (US States Crime 2004 -2005). However, tracking down a state-by-state breakdown of religiosity isn’t quite so simple. In the end I decided that — given we were taking a look at ‘godlessness’ — I’d use the American Religious Identification Survey (PDF file) carried out by the City University of New York in 2001 which provides a State by State Distribution of Selected Religious Groups (Table 15), including those who identify with “No Religion”. It is this group I compared against the crime stats. I’m assuming that both the crime stats and the religious stats are roughly typical, so the slight disparity in the years they were gathered shouldn’t prove too important.

The results were illuminating. Clearly there will be numerous factors influencing the crime statistics on a state-by-state basis, from quality of policing to economic conditions. I have focussed on violent crime in the hope of ruling out at least some of the economic influence on the statistics. Despite these other factors, however, I assume that those who link ‘godlessness’ with crime would argue that less violent crime should occur in those states with a low percentage of people who describe themselves as having “no religion”, while a high proportion of non-religious people in a state would correlate with a higher crime rate.

In fact, there’s absolutely no clear statistical correlation whatsoever. There’s some interesting blips, certainly. North Dakota has the highest proportion of religious people, and also has the lowest violent crime rate. Which is a pretty good start for the “godlessness equals crime” folks. But the state with the third highest proportion of religious people (South Carolina) has the highest violent crime rate of any state, with only the almost entirely urban District of Columbia beating it. And DC — whose violent crime rate is almost double that of South Carolina — is in the top quarter of the religious stats, while Washington state — the most godless of them all — is in the bottom third of the violent crime stats.

So while I accept that an increasing secularism could logically lead to greater social exclusion and a consequent rise in crime rates, the actual data from the United States shows little or no evidence for this.

Remember a couple of years back when right-wing Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, ran some controversial cartoons? There was a big kerfuffle about the whole thing… Imams in Denmark demanded that the government censure (and indeed censor) the newspaper; several groups of young men in Iran and elsewhere were filmed burning a variety of Scandanavian flags; and a popular boycott of Danish goods got organised in a few moslem nations.

Back in Europe this reaction was itself greeted with faux-shock. How dare they threaten our right to a free press! Bloody Islamofascists and their talk of a global caliphate! Soon we won’t be able to get a drink and our women will have to wear burqas! Except, of course, nobody was threatening our right to a free press. The Danish government never once entertained the idea of changing the law and punishing the paper. They made a few conciliatory statements for the benefit of the Danish Moslem minority (as you’d hope they would — given it was their job to ensure the situation didn’t escalate and create social unrest), but were abundantly clear on the point that the national press was free to publish cartoons mocking religion and religious figures if they so wished.

And that’s all as it should be. I fully support the right of Jyllands-Posten to publish those cartoons. It’s really important that I make that very clear. Because at the same time, I despise them for putting me in that position. The cartoons were shit. They were unfunny. Yes, even the “All out of virgins” one. It raised a smile only because of the sheer crapness of the company it found itself in. They had no redeeming artistic worth and none of them made a sharp or insightful point. In fact, the only possible reason that Jyllands-Posten had for publishing them was to offend the Danish moslem minority. I just don’t buy the claim that the merit in the cartoons is the iconoclasm involved. Publishing them in an Islamic country, as some editors later did… now that’s iconoclastic and challenges the established system. That’s a whole other statement. But publishing them in Denmark. That’s just belittling a specific minority.

And I hate the idea that I have to defend that in the name of free speech. Give me The Satanic Verses any day. I never finished it by the way — I don’t really get on with Baron Rushdie’s writing, but I accept that there may be merit in it.

As for the Danish boycott and token flag-burning? Let’s face it; it was all a bit half-hearted and clearly destined to fade fast. Despite the behaviour of their gutter press, Denmark just doesn’t have what it takes to inspire the kind of passion and hatred that, say, a Great Satan like the USA does.

Nothing surprising about the story so far… nasty newspaper prints desperately unfunny cartoons clearly aimed at offending and provoking a particular immigrant community (one that’s notoriously touchy and easy to provoke given the current global tension). The minority duly obliges; gets all offended, holds a few meetings, organises some protests and calls for a change in the law. The authorities (as usual) basically ignore the protesters, and except for the occasional scuffle between the police and those they deem to be “the extreme fringe”, it’s all a bunch of people shouting stuff. Nothing surprising, and roughly as far away from a genuine threat to Denmark’s free press as it’s possible to get.

Then however, something weird did happen. With no actual basis in fact, all across Europe columnists began claiming that freedom of the press was under threat. “Them beardy Imams!” they said, “They won’t stop until you can’t get a bacon sandwich east of Reykjavik.” And no matter how patiently you repeated the words; “Get a hold of yourself you twit. That’s not actually going to happen”; supposedly sentient beings were nonetheless using the words “Londonistan” and “Eurabia” without irony.

And then something very very weird happened. All over Europe — hell, all over the world — newspapers and magazines started to reprint the unfunny cartoons. 143 newspapers in 56 countries (according to this article here). The vast majority of whom were apparently making a statement about free speech. Vigorously defending the right of Jyllands-Posten to publish these cartoons. A right, let me reiterate, that was not under any actual threat.

I trust therefore, that some or all of those 143 newspapers in 56 countries will be reprinting the recently banned Spanish royal sex cartoon with all due haste? Here we have a cartoon that actually has been censored. A judge has ruled that it “insulted the royal family” which is against the law in Spain ( “Slandering or defaming the Spanish royal family carries a two-year prison sentence”)… a country, it should be pointed out, that was happy to allow the “Mohammed” cartoons published (they appeared in El Mundo, which has the second largest daily circulation).

Of course, the Spanish royal sex cartoon doesn’t have footage of youths burning flags to raise its profile, so I guess it would be unfair to expect all 143 aforementioned newspapers to pick up on this story. Nonetheless, given that this really is an assault on free speech (the authorities have ordered the seizure of the entire print-run!), whereas previously it was a powerless minority waving some placards, I’d expect quite a few of them to reprint the cartoon in solidarity with El Jueves magazine. Right?

Otherwise it would make their previous action look suspiciously like they were themselves more interested in sticking up two fingers at moslems than in some high-minded ‘freedom of the press’ schtick.

Usually when those in power do something contemptible, my reaction is to feel contempt. I suspect I’m like most people in that regard. I’m the first to admit that it’s not a particularly nice emotion to be feeling. All the same, so long as the Irish government turns a blind eye to extraordinary rendition or Dubya Bush announces that his plan for Iraq is to (via PDF) ‘make it more like Israel’ (that’s like “bring it on” times a thousand, right? It can only be a deliberate attempt to piss off the insurgents) then it’s not like we’ve got much of a choice about how to feel.

That said, occasionally you’ll hear or read something so incredibly contemptible, so off-the-scale ludicrous, that you’re forced to just step back and admire the blatant arrogance and cheek of it. And like Bill Hicks discussing the police officers who — under oath — insisted they used the minimum force required to restrain Rodney King, today I am forced to wonder at the sheer size of Lord Goldsmith’s balls.

Seriously. They must be bloody massive.

Lord Goldsmith, for those who don’t know (or have already repressed the memory) was Tony Blair’s Attorney General. He was the chief legal advisor to the UK government for the best part of six years; appointed in 2001 and serving for the entire duration of the Iraq War to date. He’s just been replaced in Gordon Brown’s cabinet reshuffle by Baroness Scotland about whom I know sod-all except that — as with Goldsmith — her willingness to use an aristocratic title makes her an anachronism more suited to a museum than a government office.

Now, there’s no doubt in my mind that Lord Goldsmith’s role during the past few years has essentially been to try and convince anyone who’ll listen that New Labour’s participation in the outright destruction of a sovereign nation — I’m talking about Iraq here, not the UK — and murder of between 2 and 3 percent of the population, is completely legal and above-board. Whenever Tony Blair did something that should rightly land him in a cell in The Hague, Lord Goldsmith popped up and said it was completely legal and above-board. There’s a P.R. agent in the novel I’m writing. His name is Henry Stone and it’s his job to spin the actions of a rich psychopath so that they appear completely legal and above-board. He’s a bit part, not a significant character, but the consequences of his actions have serious ramifications and permit said psychopath to continue his nastiness. In the language of psychology we would describe Henry Stone as “an enabler”.

Anyways, Lord Goldsmith is no longer in a position to enable New Labour to run amok (though I suspect Baroness Scotland has been chosen for her ability to do the same). So, on the day he left office, he clearly decided it was time to let us all know what a massive pair of balls he’s got on him. He called…

for an investigation into how illegal torture techniques came to be used by British soldiers in Iraq. He said it was a matter of grave concern that techniques such as sleep deprivation, hooding and stress positions were deployed against suspects held by UK forces.

Clare Dyer | Goldsmith calls for inquiry into Iraq torture (via Bloggerheads)

Hang on a second; hasn’t he been in a position to order an inquiry into this for the past few years? He’s been the chief legal advisor to the government since 2001 and he waits until he no longer holds that position before mentioning this concern of his? Seriously, is this a joke? And if not, why hasn’t this man been lynched yet, big balls or no big balls?

Ah, but wait a second. Lord Goldsmith goes on to say:

“These techniques were outlawed on a cross-party basis in 1972. We have to seek why anyone thought these were permissible techniques. I think there needs to be an inquiry…
[But] Lord Goldsmith told the parliamentary committee that he was only aware such interrogation techniques were being used after Baha Musa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist, died in British custody.

Ibid.

Well, fair enough then. I’m hardly going to criticise the guy for not launching an inquiry into something he was unaware was happening. Arguably someone in his position should have been informed about the activity of British troops, but if he wasn’t then he can hardly be blamed for failing to act on information he didn’t have. So yeah, fair enough.

Except no! Not “fair enough”. Not even a little bit “fair enough”! You see, The Guardian article reminds anyone who didn’t know that:

Mr Musa, 26, had been detained under suspicion of being an insurgent. He died in Basra in September 2003. Seven members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, which is now the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, faced the most expensive court martial in British history, but all were eventually acquitted. One soldier, Corporal Donald Payne, 35, became the first British serviceman to admit a war crime, that of treating Iraqi prisoners inhumanely, and was jailed for a year.

Ibid.

September 2003? That’s almost four years ago. Lord Goldsmith’s mitigation for not calling for an inquiry sooner is that he only found out about the situation four years ago.

As I say… what balls!

In less than a week (July 1st 2007), England and Wales will follow the lead of Scotland, Ireland and a whole host of other places in banning tobacco-smoking in enclosed public places. Neil Clark has a piece in today’s Comment Is Free — Liberal England: Going Up in Smoke (also reproduced on his blog) — which attacks this ban as illiberal. He goes as far as to state that “the first country to introduce bans on smoking in public was the Third Reich” and asks:

Isn’t it sad that 60 years after playing a decisive role in the defeat of the Nazis and their loathsome, intolerant ideology, Britain, in its illiberal attitude towards smoking and smokers, is now aping them?

Neil Clark | Liberal England: Going Up in Smoke

All very dramatic, I think you’ll agree. Albeit inaccurate. But what sort of journalist lets accuracy get in the way of a good turn of phrase? In fact, tobacco has been periodically banned outright and subject to numerous restrictions on where it can and can’t be consumed ever since it arrived in Europe. As far back as 1590, tobacco was the subject of a public ban. Then, in the 1670s, around the same time as England was trying to stamp out the practice of tobacco smoking by levying massive taxation on a weed “lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse”, there were areas of central Europe where the sale and distribution of tobacco was punishable by death.

But it’s not Neil’s factual inaccuracies that I want to address. Indeed it’s not so much what the piece says in attacking the ban, as what it fails to say, that really interests me. By painting the ban as an example of Big Oppressive Government Vs. The Little Guy, the article succeeds in framing the issue in completely spurious terms and fails to mention — even once — the actual reasons why the ban is being introduced.

Protecting The Little Guy

I think it’s now fairly uncontroversial to state that, whether or not your lips physically make contact with the cigarette, inhaling tobacco smoke carries long-term health risks. Indeed, if you were to ask any GP in the country, I feel certain you would be informed that avoiding second-hand smoke was highly advisable. This means — and here we have the crux of the matter, blithely overlooked by Neil Clark — that if you’re a bar-worker, you are forced into a choice: you can ignore the best medical advice we have, or you can lose your pay-cheque.

There is no liberal case whatsoever for the ban; if you support it you may be many things, but please, don’t have the audacity to call yourself a liberal. The argument for restricting smoking in public on account of the possible health risks caused by passive smoking is an argument for having separate smoking areas in pubs, cafes and restaurants and not for a blanket ban, which will encompass even private clubs where members have assented to a pro-smoking policy.

Neil Clark | Liberal England: Going Up in Smoke

It seems that living in “a liberal society” means insisting that the — largely minimum-wage-earning — service sector must inhale Mr. Clark’s tobacco smoke or find another job.

But of course it means nothing of the sort. Despite the imperious insistence that supporters of the ban shouldn’t call themselves “liberal”, I find myself in exactly that position. I support the ban, and I am a liberal. My liberalism — unlike, it seems, that of others — doesn’t stretch to damaging the health of the waiters, bartenders and cleaners who have no choice (assuming they want to keep the job that’s feeding and housing them) but to share my space… yes, even in those “private clubs where members have assented to a pro-smoking policy”. Or do the members of these clubs do the cleaning and serving too?

But what if the staff assent to a pro-smoking policy too? Well, in theory that’s all well and good but it ignores the fact that the employer-employee relationship is a power-relationship. Like it or not, there would be plenty of unscrupulous pub and café owners willing to put pressure on their staff to sign a “smoking waiver”, perhaps in the knowledge that there are few other jobs in the local area, and plenty of unemployed smokers willing to fill the position. Neil Clark — and the others who, in the name of liberalism, propose exemptions — are proposing a society where an employer, when hiring, may discriminate in favour of those applicants willing to sign a document waiving their right to a working environment free of unnecessary health risks (a right under British law for decades, incidentally)…

Section 2(2)(e) of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) places a specific duty on the employer in respect of employees to provide and maintain a safe working environment which is, so far as is reasonably practicable, safe, without risks to health and adequate as regards facilities and arrangements for their welfare at work.

It seems to me that employers; merely by allowing, let alone “requiring”, employees to work in a smoke-filled environment are already breaking the law. By enforcing a workplace smoking ban, the government is merely enforcing existing legislation designed, very specifically, to protect the powerless from the powerful.

It’s like when I read columnists or bloggers opposing rises in petrol duty or car tax by claiming that “it’ll hit the poorest the most”. All the while ignoring the fact that the poorest 20% of the population don’t actually own cars and would be far better served by a high car tax that directly reduced the cost of public transport. Similarly, those opposed to the workplace smoking ban who claim to be the powerless victims of government action, are conveniently overlooking the fact that the ban is aimed precisely at preventing them imposing their damaging smoke on people whose power to avoid that smoke is severely curtailed.