Peter Hitchens

Despite his reputation as a right-winger, Peter Hitchens remains a leftist; and this is because he has failed to renounce journalism and all its works. PH’s leftism is evident in his stance on drugs. Take this extract from The War We Never Fought (2012):

“These blurred boundaries mean that many people live and work in advanced societies without ever being diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness, as long as they do not in some way trouble the authorities…A large welfare state, which houses and supports many marginal and chaotic unemployed people, allows them to continue to subsist more-or-less-adequately and has no great interest in classifying them as mentally ill. In fact, it often has a strong interest in not doing so, as expensive drugs might then be prescribed, or even more costly hospital beds.”

The last portion reveals that PH is really a leftist; his logic is wonky—and it is wonky because he has made the assumption that the state refuses to classify people as “mentally ill” in order to save money. This reveals that PH thinks that the state is motivated by efficiency and the desire to save money—and that since this is so it refuses to do the “kind” thing and classify more people as mentally ill. This reveals that PH believes that the state is really good—efficient, responsible—and he makes this statement because he uses emotional rhetoric to manipulate people into support for his views (feminine leftist tactics).

Reality: the state has an interest in classifying many more people as mentally ill—the department responsible for this area receives a budget in accordance with the number of actual or projected mentally ill people; far from holding back resources, the state is only too keen to classify people as mentally ill—the bureaucrat who runs that department judges his status by his budget and department size; he will do everything he can to increase it. PH believes the opposite, he believes the state acts like an efficient and responsible private enterprise.

PH is right to note in his book that the establishment favours cannabis legalisation through covert methods; however, he then compares this situation to the ban on cigarettes. If we banned cigarettes, says PH, surely we should ban cannabis?

Reality: if there were to be a free market millions would take up cigarettes again—and they would naturally push out the cannabis smokers, only poets and whoopsies like Proust want to smoke pot. Cannabis enjoys its current predominance because the leftist elites have artificially altered the market so that cannabis predominates. Leftists like cannabis because it is soporific: it takes away pain (leftists fear pain, even mild pain, being neurotics); it stupefies you and makes you lovey-dovey and uncompetitive; it makes you fat because you have “the munchies”; and it smells—it is nasally narcissistic, you can smell a cannabis smoker from a mile off. Further, cannabis is associated with blacks, such as Bob Marley, and thus constitutes a holy drug in the leftist religion.

Cigarettes speed you up and make you concentrate and work harder. Cigarettes are sociable, everyone gathers around to chat quickly on a fag break. Their personalities are distinct and competitive. Cannabis smokers, by contrast, lose all individuality and can barely string a sentence together. For a while I smoked a pipe and it made my mind work nineteen to the dozen, even when I went to bed; it also stimulated imagery—CG Jung would not have been possible without a pipe. The pipe is a powerful psychotropic device, essential for visions—Merlin smoked a pipe, Jamaican gangstas smoke weed.

If smoke inhalation causes lung cancer then cannabis must be at least as bad as cigarettes. Yet our system, as PH rightly notes, champions cannabis. As with all conservatives, all plodders, PH asks for the system to be consistent. He misunderstands: the system is deliberately inconsistent because it has purposively crushed the natural market for ciggies and artificially promoted cannabis. Why? Because cannabis renders you a soft flabby love-dovey adult baby who is easy to control and manipulate because by the time you get to the kitchen to satiate your munchies you have forgotten what you went there for. A free and dynamic society is a society where cigarettes, pipes, and cigars are smoked. Cocaine and amphetamines are also essential, cocaine is a drug for beautiful people—for traders and models, just as pipes are for wizardry. Cocaine is banned in Western societies because the West resents the beautiful and worships the ugly—worships the cannabis smoker.

The arguments put forward by the tobacco lobby as regards cigarettes were entirely correct. The link to lung cancer is weak, by the time the research was carried out Western science was already corrupt—cigarettes were banned, as with fox hunting, to destroy liberty and from resentment. The arguments as regards health are spurious—otherwise cannabis would be banned too (Hitchens fails to infer this, just calls for a consistent ban as if the original ban was in good faith).

Reality: legalise all drugs. PH wants the state to fight a “real war” on drugs—he wants “real” socialism. Let the people have their poison pleasures, even pot—though only a minority ever wants that foul weed. The negative social consequences can be dealt with through a responsible criminal justice system—e.g. theft should become a capital crime again, this would soon remove those heroin addicts unable to hold down a job. With a consistent criminal justice system (i.e. what we had until the 1830s) we can allow free citizens to choose their own poison in private; and if they cannot handle their liquor or drugs we will remove them from the nation until only those adapted to survive are left. PH remains a communist at heart; he just wants to ban all private vices to “protect” people (make them dependent on the state)—and this is because he is a sour resentful journalist, a mind policeman who fears freedom.