COMMENT
They said what..?
Spotlight on the national media
WHILE THE GOVERNMENT
concentrates on the specific risks
that older people face when they
contract [corona] virus, other high-
risk groups appear conspicuously
absent from official messaging.
Perhaps it’s who they are that
explains this silence: rough
sleepers and intravenous drug
users, groups whose welfare the
government routinely neglects…
National emergencies bring out
the best and worst in human
behaviour, and coronavirus is no
different. Resources will be rightly
be focused on high-risk older
people, but they aren’t the only
parts of the population we should
protect. So far it seems we have
rationed our compassion, exposing
our collective prejudice about who
deserves care, and who we deem to
‘So far it seems
we have rationed
our compassion,
exposing our
collective prejudice
about who
deserves care...’
have brought their ill health upon
themselves. Coronavirus grimly
testifies to the health inequalities
we lack the political will to change.
Ian Hamilton, Independent,
11 March
THE EFFECTS OF SELF-ISOLATION
– countless hours with often no
more company than a computer
screen – are also the perfect
conditions for online gambling.
Gambling companies have
realised this and already appear to
be using our newfound isolation
to their own advantage. Where
quarantine has meant a downturn
for many businesses, gambling
companies may see this period as
a huge opportunity to increase
their profit margins... I am deeply
concerned that as we move
further into this crisis, greater
numbers of people will turn to
online gambling as a distraction.
In the absence of legislation,
the industry itself must act
responsibly.
Carolyn Harris, Guardian,
27 March
ON REREADING Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four (as we all should, very
often), I was struck by a passage
on what he called Crimestop, a
barrier in the mind which makes
people instinctively stop short
of thinking dangerously, or
committing Thought Crime.
This involves failing to
understand the simplest
arguments, if they are hostile
to conventional wisdom. An
example of this is the futile
‘report’ on drugs produced last
week by Dame Carol Black. It
blames drug abuse on deprivation
through ‘huge geographical and
socioeconomic inequalities’.
It treats drug taking as an
involuntary crime, as a disease
to be dealt with by ‘treatment’,
a formula insulting to the truly
sick. Disease is compulsory. How
the sick wish they could give up
having cancer. It completely fails
to notice that illegal drug abuse in
this country has soared because
the police and courts have simply
stopped bothering to enforce the
laws against drug possession.
Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday,
1 March
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APRIL 2020 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • 19