As if the Criminal Justice Bill wasn't enough, the Tory MP Barry Legg has introduced a bill that is shortly to become law holding dance music clubs responsable for any drug offences that occur inside the club and even in the street outside the club!
As everyone knows there is a lot of drug taking inside UK prisons. The Government run the prisons. If the Government themselves can't stop drug taking inside PRISONS, how the hell do they expect the clubs to stop drug taking in the clubs!
It's crazy!
Many people take drugs these days. It's a general fact of life. The way the government is trying to tackle drugs is so hypocritical that it gives young people no respect for the law - so they probable end up taking even more drugs.
We deplore the way the media constantly link dance music culture to drugs. What about rock music? There are more and worse drugs in rock music - far more heroin and alcohol abuse than in the dance scene. How many major dance musicians are heroin addicts? None that we know of! Unfortunately rock music has become so establishment that the authorities tolerate the vast amounts of heroin and cocaine use that everyone knows goes on. And the alcohol companies love it when people get messed up on alcohol - because it just increases their profits.
Dance music on the other hand is perceived as a threat to the social order and to the vast profits made from alcohol sales. And so it gets stigmatised in this grossly hypocritical way.
Many commercial club promoters are so anxious to make profits from their bars that they routinely stop the water supply to the toilets, and this is dangerous to many dancers who sensibly know that they must drink water to replenish themselves in the hot sweaty clubs.
We are not denying that a lot of drug taking occurs in the dance music scene - and we were as sad as anyone about the tragic story of Leah Betts who died in a terrible accident connected with the drug ecstasy. But we feel that the way Leah Betts' bereaved parents pop up on TV everytime there is any kind of ecstasy accident is morbid and vile. It's almost as if they're happy when someone dies in an ecstasy accident because it helps their grotesque campaign to avenge their daughter's death. It is they who are very much behind the Legg bill.
So Mr. Betts, do you never have a drink? Are you not aware of the thousands of people who die each year as a result of alcohol abuse? Do you smoke Mr Betts? Do you agree with the severe health warnings on a packet of cigarettes? Are you aware of the huge number of people that die of tobacco related diseases?
Everyone knows that taking ecstasy is not a risk free pursuit. But the actual figures show that the number of unfortunate accidents are quite small compared with the number of pills taken each week. People know that in fact the risk to health is quite small and statistically far less than with the officially tolerated drugs alcohol and tobacco.
And the risk is very much less than in most dangerous sports. When asked why they don't ban dangerous sports, politicians start talking about the individual's right to choose how one spends one's time. Surely this attitude should apply much more to drugs - certainly with regard to cannabis, and there is a strong case to apply this attitude to drugs like ecstasy and LSD.
Heroin is obviously such an undeniably addictive and dangerous drug that it is hard to justify liberalisation, but it is worth pointing out that in Holland, where official tolerance of softer drugs and the testing of ecstasy for quality is well known, there is a far lower proportion of serious heroin addicts than in other European countries.
If we consider ourselves civilised we must get away from this vile hysteria about drugs, particularily in connection with dance culture.
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