UK: Drug laws are a joke but police don't help

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Karl Minns

Evening News, Norwich

Friday 02 Jul 2004

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"A MAN is jailed for a machete attack", "Three knifed in town brawl",
"Clean-up after night of violence". Three headlines from the Evening News
in the past week - and all three incidents the result of excessive alcohol.

Three cheers then for the butterfly-on-a-wheel tactics of Norwich police,
who are introducing sniffer dogs to all Riverside venues in a bid to catch
those daring to smoke a joint or take Ecstasy. Now, it may come as a
surprise to some readers, but those gits smashing up your doorway,
fighting, swearing, smashing bottles, vandalising property, vomiting,
littering and costing the NHS millions every year aren't actually on drugs.
Well, they are, they're on that acceptable, taxable one called booze,
which, ironically helps pay for the dogs, raids and heavy-handed policing
that makes those sensational vote-winning headlines about the "war on drugs."

A war, which has police allegedly squirting CS gas into the faces of
youngsters daring to have a dance in a disused Norwich factory, yet failing
to use it on the drunken Neanderthals who trashed Thetford last Tuesday.

Now, I am neither condoning nor condemning drug use. I believe that what
or who you put into your body is your own business, as long as it doesn't
hurt anyone else. No victim no crime: geddit?.

But I've been to countless raves where the majority of people have been on
Ecstasy and smoking cannabis and I've never seen a fight or an altercation.
However, if I ever dare to pass the drinking holes of Prince of wales Road
or Riverside on a weekend, I see violence, screaming women, anti-social
behaviour and aggressive young men spoiling for a scrap.

So perhaps if Norwich police stopped having such a naive, provincial
attitude to recreational drug-taking and its effects, they'd train dogs to
sniff out those who have been drinking excessive amounts of Stella Artois
of Carlsburg or wearing Paco Rabanne. You know, the kind you see on CCTV
footage kicking the crap out of innocent passers-by and destroying property.

But hey, let those nobs drink their 15 pints, make our lives a misery and
our city a frightening place to be, because at least they're not breaking
the law by doing it. And instead, let's persecute the stoned and loved-up
minority who are out just to dance, laugh and enjoy themselves.

Drug laws are a joke, and Norwich police's latest crackdown sends out just
one message: all alcohol good, all drugs bad. Nice one plod.

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