Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Heffer blames drugs for the death of "tarts"

Simon Heffer has come up with an interesting angle in today's Telegraph. Apparently the reason "people kill tarts" all stems from drugs, the "theory" (and I use that term loosely) goes like this. The vast majority of hookers are smackheads (I'm not sure if that is actually true), therefore if we put drug users in jail more then drug dealers will have no one to sell to, the Mr Big loses money, and there will be less hookers on drugs, therefore less hookers will be murdered by homicidal fruitcakes. Got it? Heffer is very clear about how this will work,
[i]f drugs use is made more difficult, there will be fewer pushers. If there are fewer pushers then life will become harder for those further up the food chain.... there would still be tarts, and there would still be people who kill tarts. There would probably, though, be gratifyingly fewer of both.
Now, forgive me for being naive here, but I was under the impression Heffer was a Thatcherite? So why has he ignored the power of the market in his argument I wonder? In his scenario the drug supply won't disappear, the price will just fall, and as the price falls, those "tarts" will get more smack for the shag as it were. What's more, what about the sex market? He may not like it, but it's not considered the oldest profession in the world for nothing.

Isn't it all so tremendously postmodern? A piece screaming for moral clarity in today's world which then cites drugs, rather than the killer[s] as the real cause for the slaughter in Ipswich. Not only has Heffer failed to realise the power of the market when it comes to drugs and sex, he also seems to have conceded the cultural war is lost to the Left's view of blame shifting. He'll be saying he likes Polly Toynbee next!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my opinion Heffer's article was a breath of fresh air and common sense against the prevailing liberal mush. No-where did he say it was not the murderer's fault; he correctly said it was drugs that made the victims so vulnerable to attack. He is absolutely right that it is drugs that drive people to prostitution. We live in a welfare state no matter how imperfect, no-one needs to prostitute themselves to survive. But social security does not pay enough for drugs. It is the craving for drugs that makes people take up such a dangerous and unpleasant 'trade'. It was no coincidence that these prostitutes who were murdered were on drugs. What else would drive them to the streets when it was already known a serial killer was murdering them?

As for your economics they're haywire. Surely if we crack down on the dealers the supply will be restricted and the price will go up, not down? Heffer made the point that after the Chinese shot 6000 drug dealers they essentially solved their drugs problem a number of years ago. Now, I'm not suggesting that we resort to such brutality, but that fact does at least show that the liberal consensus of "nothing can be done" is wrong. Simply that it is a question of having the will and resolve to tackle the problem.

dizzy said...

Heffer did not say that we should crackdown on dealers, he said we should crackdown on users. I fail to see where the "liberal mush" in believing in freedom to do what one wishes to ones own body is those.