I write on November 1st, the old Celtic feast of Samhain, th morning after Hallowe’en. Ah yes, Halloween. I won’t insult the suffering of those living in Baghdad by likening my neighbourhood to that city, but it was pretty spectacular all the same. Everywhere you looked there was bonfires blazing and fireworks flaring. Some of the bangers that went off sounded like percussion grenades, and packed one hell of a punch.

So omnipresent were the fireworks that it probably comes as a surprise to visitors and people who have come here to live to find that fireworks are illegal in Ireland (though not, be it said, in Northern Ireland, surprisingly enough). What, they might legitimately ask, does illegal mean?
Maybe they think the word illegal here is comparable to the word snow to the Inuit. They have forty words for snow. We have forty meanings for illegal…
It’s the Irish way, friends. And, not surprisingly, there have been many calls for legalisation and control of sales and quality to put an end to this nonsense.
It’s the same argument that you hear about many other things. But of course, we have a remarkable penchant in this jurisdiction for establishing rules that we don’t keep. It’s happening even as we speak, with the anti-smoking legislation, the rules on under-age drinking, and so on. But the truth is, just as there’s a strong case for legalising fireworks, there’s a strong case for legalising and controlling drugs as well…
As you all know, the question of our drug and alcohol intake has been the subject of hype, headlines and hysteria in recent years. It has also been the subject of some very flawed research. I mean, a few weeks ago we had the farrago of the Economist’s booklet saying we spent more on drink than five other countries combined, only for various researchers to come out and say the figures presented were ‘ludicrous’.
That didn’t stop the Irish media from having a field day with the figures. They were much more reticent regarding their retractions. And there’s more. The United Nations has produced some comparisons and its anti-drugs spokesperson said they were very worried about Ireland. We have the highest use of amphetamines and ecstasy, they said, and young people here were playing Russian roulette with their health.
But wait!! Just as the hysteria dies down, it’s revealed that in fact, we’re not Europe’s highest consumers of drugs, and certainly not as bad as was stated by the UN. According to the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and the Drug and Alcohol Information and Research Unit in Northern Ireland, the use of these drugs is much higher in the Netherlands and Britain (other than Northern Ireland). Amphetamine use is also higher in Denmark and Norway than here.
It’s all to do with comparable statistics and the way information is gathered. But in sum, according to Dr Hamish Sinclair, the latest research put Ireland in the ‘middle of the road’. Which is, as I would have thought, about right.
But wait again! The day after this rebuttal came another story in the Irish Times, headlined ‘Irish youth top European table in solvent abuse, a major study on drug abuse shows’. The authors of this new headline-grabber are the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, who pulled together loads of local reports and research.
The report also expresses concern at the rise of binge-drinking among Europe’s young people. It shows that when it comes to 15-16 year olds who have been drunk more than 40 times in their lives, the Irish are third highest in Europe, after the Danes and the British.
Pretty normal, you’d say. But then we get to solvents, and it claims that 22% of Irish 15-16 year olds say they have abused solvents, the highest rate in Europe. Next highest is in Britain at 15% and Portugal is lowest at 3%. Seems daft to me – maybe they’re talking about inhalers rather than inhalants?
Anyway, what this all adds up to is that, as with fireworks, there’s a lot of illegal activity going on. So, wouldn’t it be better to accept reality and legislate for all this to happen in a safe way?
It’s not just the fading echoes of last night’s explosions that are prompting me to say this. No, I’ve been reading about Evo Morales…
Morales is described as the new Simón Boliver, and likened by some to Che Guevara, and he’s the new hero in Bolivia. He is, as Peter Beaumont of the Observer puts it, ‘champion of the cocaine producers and indigenous peoples’.
He’s socialist, anti-imperialist and America’s declared enemy. Morales wants Bolivia’s cocaleros to be able to grow and market their cocaine after years of US-funded efforts to stem production. He rejects the US neo-colonialism and wants an anti-capitalist, local, indigenous and socialist future for the country. He sees the coca leaf as ‘a symbol of national unity’ and the defence of coca as ‘the defence of all natural resources like hydrocarbon, oil and gas’.
So tell me. What, when you boil it all down, is the core difference between coffee and cocaine? Yes, I know there’s different levels of strength and all that. But it would certainly be possible to market coca in a form and at a strength that would give a nice buzz without the paranoia and viciousness that accompanies heavy use. In such a scenario, abuse of the stimulant is the same as abuse of any. Golly, it could even be put back into Coca-Cola, where it was for so long!
And you’ve given the poor of Bolivia an income.
It’s the old dilemma – recognise reality and try to control it or legislate for unreality and just try to contain it.
What do you think? Time for a change?