{"id":14255,"date":"2018-02-12T18:34:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T18:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=14255"},"modified":"2018-05-10T19:22:16","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T19:22:16","slug":"credit-where-it-is-due-the-daily-mail-not-mrs-may-nailed-drug-loving-norman-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2018\/02\/credit-where-it-is-due-the-daily-mail-not-mrs-may-nailed-drug-loving-norman-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Credit Where It Is Due. The Daily Mail Not Mrs May Nailed Drug-Loving Norman Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theresa May has walked into the sunshine again after a few awful days. Such is the magic of politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a few days ago, much of her shine as a tough and competent Home Secretary had worn off. \u00a0Her child abuse inquiry appeared doomed before it had begun. With the prospect of an expensive and endless white elephant ahead (what the experience of both the Saville and Chilcot probes portend) as she apologised to the victims, she must have been ruing the day she ever gave into their demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, it was just a few days ago that she could please no one. Her insistence on opting back into the European Arrest Warrant infuriated her backbenchers and left the Eurosceptic public astonished. Could she really be giving\u00a0carte blanche<\/em>\u00a0for us to be picked off our own streets and dumped in a Latvian, Czech or Bulgarian gaol where due process,\u00a0habeas corpus<\/em>\u00a0and so forth are, despite their EU member status, still \u00a0pretty much conspicuous for their absence?<\/span><\/p>\n

Then at the nadir of her fortunes up she comes smiling. \u00a0All thanks to the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and very grateful she should be to them too\u00a0\u2013 she was handed Norman Baker\u2019s scalp on a plate.\u00a0 Overnight she became the new scourge of the Lib Dems, to the joy of her party and her admirers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nick Clegg, the Mail discovered, had encouraged the BBC to give airtime to the drug-legalising organisations (Transform and Release) to promote the controversial and highly (Lib Dem) spun\u00a0Home Office report<\/a>\u00a0pushed by his Home Office placeman, one Norman Baker.<\/span><\/p>\n

This report was already proving a severe embarrassment to her, adding to her woe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Opening up the drug debate to\u00a0\u2018legalising\u00a0liberals\u2019 had never been of her choosing. \u00a0She was bounced into it.\u00a0\u00a0At the time of the Home Affairs Select Committee report and Nick Clegg’s demand for a Royal Commission on Drugs Policy (a couple of years ago now), giving permission to her then (Lib Dem) Minister, Jeremy Browne, to go on a jaunt (sorry, I meant an international drugs policy fact-finding mission) must have seemed infinitely preferable.<\/span><\/p>\n

But instead of subsequently chucking into the bin the contents of this \u2018jolly\u2019 (to the drug-loving countries of Uruguay, Colorado, the Czech Republic and Portugal, to name but a few of those selected) \u00a0\u2013 which she should and could have done on the basis of its questionable content \u2013 she sat on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

At that moment she made herself a hostage to fortune. Specifically, she made herself a hostage to Norman Baker, the conspiracy theorist, ageing hippy and would-be rock star that Clegg had chosen to replace the more cogent and intelligent Mr Browne.<\/span><\/p>\n

But for the Daily Mail scoop, but for their forensic research, which exposed the report\u2019s dodgy\u00a0facts, but for their pinning the whole thing on Calamity Clegg and Barmy Baker, Theresa would today still be doing daily battle with an\u00a0unbearably smug Norm\u00a0and seeming rather less than in charge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, she still might be blissfully unaware of the civil servant porkies they so glibly presented in her name as \u2018evidence-based\u2019 policy \u00a0– of the false facts it took the Mail to expose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clear that there has not been a lasting and significant increase in drug use in Portugal since 2001\u201d, the civil servants, who drafted the report with Baker\u2019s blessing, asserted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Except there has been.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the decade following decriminalisation, school-age drug use, as the Mail correctly pointed out, rose from 12 per cent to 19 per cent of the age group. Back in 1995 (before decriminalisation) only 8 per cent of this group had tried drugs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either the researchers were not going \u00a0to let an inconvenient fact get in the way of good story or they\u00a0just didn\u2019t bother to do their homework. That\u2019s why anyone interested in reading through the entire report is advised to put down the rose-tinted spectacles accompanying it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It skates through medical marijuana in the United States, legalisation of cannabis in Colorado and Uruguay, drug consumption rooms, \u2018assisted heroin injecting\u2019 and other liberal \u2018harm reduction\u2019 but ethically dubious policies in other countries. It ignores swathes of criticism of these back door to legalisation policies and lacks the rigour and\u00a0detail\u00a0to provide a credible basis for discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Predictably, it treats Portugal\u2019s \u2018dissuasion commissions\u2019 on a par with the USA\u2019s longstanding, 2,500-strong federal wide and much respected drug court network – of which independent evaluations have demonstrated positive outcomes and over whose time span \u00a0cocaine use has dropped by 75 per cent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frankly, Mrs May is lucky to no longer have this dodgy dossier still hanging round her neck.\u00a0 With all the plaudits that have been raining down on her – from the\u00a0Mail<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to the Telegraph<\/em><\/a>\u00a0– for being the longest-serving Home Secretary since Rab Butler, for\u00a0surviving one of the most difficult senior roles in Cabinet, for regaining the\u00a0top spot<\/a>\u00a0in the battle for the Tory succession in the regular poll of activists by Conservative Home<\/em>\u00a0and accompanying fulsome praise –\u00a0 she\u2019d do well to reflect how lucky she has been.<\/span><\/p>\n

She might think it is time to sharpen up those micro-management skills that\u00a0The Times\u2019s Francis Elliott<\/a>\u00a0rather kindly supposes to have kept her on top.\u00a0 The Daily Mail scoop and the Lib-Dems’ shenanigans and spin surrounding the publication of a\u00a0report\u00a0<\/a>that she herself signed off\u00a0show these much-hyped qualities have not been much in evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

A bit more micro-management and she\u2019d have sent\u00a0her civil servants back to the drawing board and queried their \u2018facts\u2019, instead of letting Norman\u2019s day arrive and allowing the report\u2019s publication on the very same day as \u2018loopy\u2019 Caroline Lucas\u2019s much heralded and Russell Brand-supported parliamentary drugs debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

For all her apparent skills this is far from her first mistake. She made a far worse one on her first day in office when she signed off Harriet Harman\u2019s horrendous and costly Equalities Act without any further discussion or reflection.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t stop there but published her own \u2018right on\u2019 Contract for Equalities.\u00a0 There is nothing that\u00a0\u2018We\u2019re all in this together\u2019<\/em>\u00a0does not cover.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess we just have to be thankful she didn\u2019t then, this last week, under Lib Dem pressure for\u00a0\u2018evidence-based\u00a0policy\u2019, \u00a0action equal access to illicit drug use by\u00a0decriminalising\u00a0it. \u00a0Her featherbrained new feminist minister Lynne\u00a0\u201cgay marriage\u201d\u00a0Featherstone (responsible for crime prevention) is bound to suggest it. Be warned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: By\u00a0<\/em>Kathy Gyngell\u00a0<\/em>conservativewoman.co.uk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 6th<\/sup> November 2014<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theresa May has walked into the sunshine again after a few awful days. Such is the magic of politics. Just a few days ago, much of her shine as a tough and competent Home Secretary had worn off. \u00a0Her child abuse inquiry appeared doomed before it had begun. With the prospect of an expensive and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,90,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe-uk","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts","category-political-sector"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}