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Cost of drugs, Price of fame
date: 13-January-2005
source : SCOTSMAN.COM
country: UNITED KINGDOM
keyword: DECRIMINALIZATION , DRUG POLICY
 

WE’RE all on drugs. He’s on booze, she’s on fags, you’re on Aspirin. I’m high on life (joke!). But some drugs are legal and some illegal. Don’t ask me why. I’m a journalist not an expert.

If ... Drugs Were Legal took us forward to 2009 when all drugs have supposedly been decriminalised and everyone is going doolally. Four years hence is hardly five minutes away, yet we saw pictures of a spacey kind of future city, complete with wee helicopter things whizzing hither and yon. The bad news, and it was mostly bad, is that there will still be car alarms. Not that the subject was discussed. But when a fictional bomb went off, the old telly drama device of sounding a car alarm was still deployed.

The If ... series seems iffy at first. It has lots of talking heads discussing the iffies and butties of the subject under advisement while, at the same time, presenting a running drama. To my surprise, this worked reasonably well.

Bobbing about among the talking heads, a top cop said decriminalisation would be dopey. Somebody else said folk would be too spaced to work. But decriminalisation campaigners wanted the trade taken out of the hands of nasty gangs. They said the prison population would halve and street prostitution would disappear.

However, it was a young person who got to the heart of the matter: "Thousands of people use drugs every weekend because they get something out of what could otherwise be a boring life." Ah, the eternal verity of the existentialists: life is essentally boring and everything we do is an attempt to escape that curse. One way might be to watch telly. But I wouldn’t recommend it.

Last night’s wee running drama involved three loose young women out clubbing. Two of them died from taking an "unlicensed" drug, and a sour-faced cop was put on the case. There weren’t a lot of smiles in this programme. Everyone was greetin’ about something. Unhappy music droned in the background. Thundery clouds scudded across dark, heaving skies.

The sour-faced cop had a wee bit of history himself, having become hooked on something while working undercover. However, at least he had a high "street IQ", as someone put it. That said, some of the most intelligent discussion came within the board of a fictional pharmaceutical company shifting away from medicinal to recreational drugs.

Consciences were stretched like chewing gum, as the chairman promised Prozac-times-a-thousand that would help productivity at work. It looked like the company was implicated in the deaths of the two bints but there was a twist in the tail, which involved the aforementioned explosion, when someone blew up a drugs lab.

Heavy stuff. Issues were raised, and there was a discussion programme afterwards. However, I didn’t want to overdose on this stuff so, instead, I watched Jordan Gets Even.

The first time I saw Jordan’s knockers, I thought I was hallucinating. Subsequently, I wrote three letters offering to marry her, but these must have got lost in the post. She’s no idea what she’s missing. True, I haven’t bought any new pants since 1983, but I keep my dentures sparkling white.

Last night, we saw Jordan sticking dentures in as she put on her face for the cameras. It was all in the service of having a larf. The idea was that prosthetic experts and whatnot would remake her as an ugly burd with black teeth and a beak the size of North Berwick. They did a remarkable job.

But, you ask, what was the bleedin’ point? Well, let the lady herself explain (as far as I can accurately render her strong English accent): "I just want to demolish everything. That basically say you’re not a good singer. Your body’s changing. You’re not as good as you used to be. You know, proper demolishin’." See? No?

Well, to put it in a nutshell, she wanted to "wind up" her mum and her agent and her boyfriend. Yes, suddenly it all becomes clear. The makeover people did such a good job, including bulking out her body with foam, that her three stooges fell for it.

I’ll tell you a funny thing, too. Jordan ordinarily has the blank look of the chav. But she looked kinder in the ugly mask. There’s a moral in there somewhere, though it’s still of little solace to the repulsive. Morals aside, this was a harmless bit of fun. I know. You’re all there sitting there waiting for me to slate it. But I’m not going to. Not till the hallucinations go away.

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