Source: Evening News, Norwich, UK

Pub Date: 6 January 1999

Published letter: Drug Czar brain-washing our children

Author: E. A. Clarke

The UK's anti-drugs co-ordinator, Keith Hellawell, has come up with a proposal that is nothing more than a programme of brain-washing our children at school.

Teachers will be told to stop describing drugs as "soft" or "recreational", he announced (Evening News, January 2).

"A drug is a drug", said Mr Hellawell.

This is an insult to teachers who, fortunately, will not be 'told' anything, least of all when it is to spread wrong information.

It is also an insult to children who want to be educated, not brain-washed.

The so-called Drugs Czar has no solution to the drugs problem.

Now he wants to distort the truth about the relative dangers of all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco which kill the most, and cannabis which kills none, and teach the children that drugs are all the same.

This sort of propaganda may be acceptable in a totalitarian regime but hardly in a democracy.

E.A.Clarke

Mount Pleasant

Norwich