High morality

Does a drug suddenly become more dangerous just because the Government says so?

A.C. Grayling, a Philosophy Professor at Birbeck University, makes a valid point about cannabis use in the Times today, after the drug was reclassified from class B to Class C this week. At the same time there are plans to downgrade ecstasy.

He says: "Since the dawn of history people have wanted to ingest substances that alter their states of consciousness, whether for relief, recreation, spiritual experience or bliss. Coffee and chocolate are also mood and mind changers. If moralisers were logicians these would be outlawed too. At the very least alcohol, as dangerous as some of the other commonly used drugs, would be banned. Or, more sensibly, every other drug would be controlled, as alcohol is, thus at a stroke liberating the police, the public purse and the populace, who would not become any more drug-crazed than they were before 1914."

Not so much philosophy as a good dose of common sense. Which is perhaps exactly what we need.