The big new in all of today's British papers is that Prince Harry has admitted to binge drinking and smoking cannabix. Prince Charles reacted to this by taking him round a drugs rehabitiliation unti to show him the damage that drugs can do.
The media reaction has been disappointing. Almost without exception the papers have dragged out the tired old "evil drugs menace" rhetoric and are talking about cannabis being a "gateway" drug that leads on to harder drugs. I've never understood the argument that says that alcohol, nicotine and caffeine don't inevitably lead to heroin, but cannabis does. Surely the only reason that might be true is that the person who sells you cannabis might also want to sell you heroin. Over the last 25 years I've known hundreds of people who have smoked cannabis and (as far as I know) none of them have taken heroin.
It's a shame that this has made the news now. We'd started to have a reasonably intelligent debate about illegal drugs in the UK. The government want to reclassify cannabis and many police forces have effectively decriminalised it. This will probably put the debate back by five years.
Personally, I see the binge drinking as a far more dangerous thing. Surely the police can identify the pubs where Harry was drinking. It's not as though the staff didn't know that he was under 18.
Re:Suprise?
pdcawley on 2002-01-14T15:04:08
Hmm... you've set that age barrier a little low there.Re:Suprise?
acme on 2002-01-14T15:43:18
Sorry, I only took a quick poll;-) Re:Suprise?
hfb on 2002-01-14T15:04:42
I'm over 30 and I think it's just as retarded. "Future Duke of York is a stoner! News at 11!". This is what the monarchy is good at and has done for centuries...why change now?
:) I mean, it's not like they'll ever have their finger on the button to release the bombs or anything. I give it a week before some girl pipes up and claims him the father of her illegitimate baby :)
The point is that I know where Fox News comes from. It panders to the conservative Christian mindset. It hounds the Clintons. It mocks "liberals". If Chelsea Clinton was busted smoking dope, the Clintons would be bad parents. If Jenna Bush was busted smoking dope, Dubya would be a strained parent trying hard to teach his kids important lessons about life.
I don't have the same insight into the tabloids. At the simplest level it seems to be "sensationalize everything to sell more copies". Who buys the papers, though? Do the papers have a political agenda? Are they opposed or in favour of marijuana decriminalisation laws?
I guess what I'm saying is that I could understand why the various US tv and newspapers would run a "famous kid smokes dope" story and why they might hype it up (or not). But I don't know the motivations behind the British press.
I'm all ears
--Nat
