Double standards?

The head of the Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse has found himself in hot water for suggesting that taking ecstasy is no more likely to be harmful than riding a horse. The Home Secretary, who seems to be more and more interested these days in producing sound-bites than doing her basic job, has pitched into him with some venom. Well, what about it? This is a classic case of selective editing. If you read his article in full, you will see that what he was talking about was the general question of why we penalise certain actions on the apparent ground of the risk associated with them while we quite cheerfully allow other actions despite them having similar, if not greater, risks attached to them. In other words, why do we criminalise drug-taking, on the grounds of its risks to health, whereas we allow people to buy and ride motorcycles for example, which carries a far greater degree of risk to life and limb. And that strikes me as being an interesting and perfectly reasonable question to ask.