Last weekend, I had an interesting and surprising discussion with some medical students, on the legalisation of cannabis.
Since they were students, I sort of assumed that they would be in favour of legalisation; and that the hypocrisy in the differing laws on alcohol and cannabis would be self-evident. Not so! Instead, they were almost unanimously in favour of prohibition.
Their objections to legalisation were based on their clinical experience of patients with cannabis-induced psychosis. De-criminalising cannabis would endorse and encourage cannabis use, increasing such mental illness. When I responded with a standard liberal argument on personal responsibility, they made the point that most people were not responsible. Amusingly, they pointed to the vast array of empty bottles on the table, explaining that even they were knowingly binge drinking, despite being probably the most educated group of people in the perils of substance abuse. What hope for everyone else?
All I could do was remind them that all of the psychotic episodes they will have witnessed would have been as a result of illegal cannabis use. They would not have seen comparative data for legalised, regulated inhalation. Could it be that perhaps regulated drugs were safer?
The debate was a timely reminder that political discourse amongst the general population is very different to the extremely liberal bubble in which I work. Out there in the real world, people are much less libertarian, more authoritarian, and for good honest reasons too. Amongst that group of med-school friends, the perception persists that criminalising something is the natural and appropriate response when confronted with something bad. The liberal case is often woolly, idealistic and missing crucial pieces.
So, what I should have asserted: Prohibition is only appropriate for those activities that harm others, and not for self-harming acts. We could then have had a discussion about whether smoking and drinking harms others or not, where a much more fruitful and divergent discussion is to be had (in this respect, I guess this post serves to shut the barn door, two days after the horse bolted).
What is so often missing from the liberal argument, is the acceptance, even the embracing, of the bad things that happen in an extremely liberal society. I have twice before made that point here, when discussing ID cards and other civil liberties. At the Convention on Modern Liberty, Dominic Grieve spoke of the “mythological state of absolute security.” Perhaps we need to speak of a mythological state of absolute health too, and admit that the consequence of decriminalisation will be an uptick in cannabis use, and an associated increase in the risk of health issues… but that we should do it anyway. The benefits to society would be greater, and we can work out regulatory ways to reduce that risk.
Photo by Ace. No drugs were used in the production of this picture.
Blocking Facebook
From a Primary Care Trust, to an associate of mine:
Recent monitoring of internet usage by staff has shown that there has been an excessive use of social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace and FriendsReunited, resulting in high bandwidth usage … Staff are reminded that internet access for personal purposes is only permitted during their break times
Leaving aside the sinister concept of “monitoring” internet usage, I think this sort of thing betrays a poor understanding of how people are using the Internet these days. For many people, Facebook is now the communication tool of choice. It has a straight-forward e-mail function, which many people seem to prefer to more traditional solutions like Hotmail or Outlook (or Mac OS X Mail). But most of the other features on the site are messaging services of some form or another, for example on the ‘Wall’, or comments on pictures or status updates. Just because they occur in semi-public, its not clear to me why this sort of personal communication is considered time-wasting, while simple vanilla e-mailing is still acceptable. I bet that if they check the stats for Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail, the usage would also be very high. Moreover, these sites are incorporating more and more social networking features too. So it looks like this sort of prohibition is made rather inconsistently, a decision made by people who are behind the curve in their understanding of the online world.
There are wider points to make here too. The first is about the way an organisation treats its staff: Do you monitor and nanny their usage, or do you ask them to self-regulate in the hope that they will use it sensibly?
The second point is about the way in which people communicate these days. Instead of writing letters or having long phone conversations, we interact more frequently, in smaller packets (journalism is changing because of this too). Why should this be stifled? Will it create a more efficient organisation, or, indeed, a happy one?
Keeping an Eye on Things
I’m at the Liberal Democrat Party conference with the SMF (Labour next week). I wandered over to the Eye Health Alliance stand, where they took a picture of the inside of my eye.
An eye examination can provide an early warning for many conditions, including brain tumours. The picture of my eye was later examined by Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris, who gave my eyes a clean bill of health.
Goodbye Doctor
The NHS will no longer employ doctors from overseas. Too many British doctors have been trained, which has lead to a high demand for places.
Since the NHS has been sustained for so long by migrant workers, clearly there are moral debates to be had: Do we owe anything to overseas doctors who have worked here before? There are also administrative issues too: Where does this leave the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme? However, there are also second order issues, the problems we may not feel for a generation to come.
It is often said that the UK, above other countries, enjoys a good reputation around the world. We are said to enjoy “good links” with other countries, especially the Commonwealth, made up for the most part of former colonies. We know that these good links are embodied not just in formal institutions, aid, and preferential trade agreements, but on the personal level too. Our large immigrant population, with family back in India or South Africa or wherever, form a multitude of individual ties which together forge a strong, enmeshed bond between to countries. We have an army of millions of people around the world, who have worked in the UK at some point in our lives. They are a million secret agents, sleeper cells in their own communities, who will stand up and defend our interests and our reputation when required. This latest decision by the Home Office is the first step in the disbanding of that multicultural regiment, and it will hurt us in the long run. It is another steo away from an open, Internationalist approach that has stood is in such good stead for so long. Let us hope these measures are not extended to other professions too.
Terrorists and the NHS
I’m sure elsewhere in Blogistan the wags are enjoying the news that all the recent terror arrestees worked for the NHS. No doubt someone will suggest that working under Patricia Hewitt was enough to drive anyone to extremism; no doubt others will quip that the doctors turned to terrorism after failing to secure a job through MTAS. Some might try to suggest that the obvious ineptitude of the terrorists proves what poor quality personnel the NHS is employing these days…
Listening to the radio reports just now, I noticed the repeated use of the phrase ‘linked’. Usually, we hear it as part of that nebulus catch-all, “groups linked to Al-Q’aeda”. To hear instead that the men were “linked to the NHS” manages to portray our Health Serivce in a rather sinister new light.
Perhaps the NHS should be more like Al-Q’aeda. Many people have been saying for many years that the individual hospitals and trusts need to behave in a more autonomous fashion. They should be set a target and left to reach it in whatever manner they see fit. Not unlike a terrorist cell.
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