Tories being hard on drugs? They’re actually being hard on class

By Richard Shrubb

Where do you sit on the Tory leadership drugs business? Manoeuvring to screw Michael Gove out of the Tory leadership race? The fact that they like to be hard on something or other (foxes? disabled people?).

The real fact is that this crap about being ‘hard on drugs’ is just another front being set up for the class war being enacted by the ruling classes on the poor.

Ladies and little boys better avoid Westminster …

Boris Johnson MP admits to taking cocaine on the BBC.

The day Boris Johnston says he’s going to be ‘hard on drugs’, every self-respecting woman and little boy better run like hell. (Women can run faster than little boys and after the hetero option is out I’m sure the ‘any hole’s a goal’ option will spring to his faux-eccentric little mind.)

Unless you’re on drugs or in need of psychiatric medication you will know the War on Drugs has failed. In 1971 US President Richard Nixon had a problem with lefties opposing the Vietnam War and BAME groups demanding civil rights. This is why he started the War on Drugs – so he could criminalise both groups.

Quoted in Vox in 2016, John Ehrlichman, who served as domestic policy chief for Nixon (and later did jail time for his antics in office) said, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

Straight from the horse’s mouth. The US ruling class couldn’t criminalise someone for being black or a lefty but they could accuse them of being fucked up on drugs and to give them big time jail sentences for the privilege.

UK War on Race

Disgraced ex-president, Richard Nixon, who coined the term ‘war on drugs’ to beat black people and anti-war hippies.

Have you ever had the idea that no matter how stupid a notion the President of the US has, the UK Prime Minister says ‘yes sir, we will do as we’re told’?

We blindly followed the second dodgiest US President in history after Trump, ‘Tricky Dickie’ Nixon. After his War on Drugs policy of 1971 we introduced the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1972 and the police started using it to stop and search BAME people.

In 1981 under Thatcher this exploded in several ghettos around the country. Brixton in London and St Pauls in Bristol both rioted as black & minority ethnic people were sick of being stopped for no reason to be checked for drugs. In 2014 the BBC reported, “An inquiry into the the 1981 Brixton riots blamed disproportionate use of stop and search. An independent report on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm riots in 1985 blamed racist policing.”

This war on BAME people continues even now. A 2016 report, Structural Racism as UK Drugs Policy states in the Executive Summary, referring to kids of today, “The majority of BAME people we consulted thought the ”War On Drugs” was actually a deliberate war on BAME people.”

Upper-middle-class privilege

Those running for Downing Street aren’t ever going to be arrested for having a blast of Beak, no matter what old groovy Govey protests.

One of the architects of the Tory Austerity programme and current editor of the Evening Standard George Osborne has a fondness for cocaine and crack whores. A decade after the Brixton riots, he was hanging out with (and renting) Natalie Rowe, who ran the Black Beauties escort agency offering prostitutes for £350 per hour. She  later pointed out he “took drugs with her at parties in the early 1990s, when she was dating one of the future Chancellor’s friends from Oxford University.”

Given his habit of turning up to House of Commons debates as Chancellor looking as I once did after taking acid before my economics exam at university, he still hasn’t left the shit alone.

Earlier this week Chris at Feed The Birds showed how Osborne’s buddy, “The odious Michael Gove has been forced to admit the fact he was a cokehead in his younger years, but reckons that doesn’t stop him from being eligible to be Prime Minister.”

Chris also reported, “Another contender for the Tory leadership, that monstrous old hag who frightens the young in the gardens of Eaton Square, Andrea Leadsom, has admitted she smoked weed at university, as most students did. Other Conservative Party leadership contenders Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt have also confessed to smoking pot. I expect more to be outed soon.”

The fact is these privileged little mummy’s boys haven’t a hope in Hell of being arrested. Their daddies will do a funny handshake with the local Chief Constable and off they go. Meanwhile from their privileged positions they go ‘hard on drugs’! Must be nice to be upper middle class and white.

Austerity – a war on the poor

Austerity has long been a war on the poor, coined by the very Old Etonian cokeheads running for Downing Street today. Every government or local authority service offered to those in need from healthcare to welfare has been squeezed so now 14 million of us now live at or below the poverty line. The problem for the Tories is that they are getting a bit of a bad reputation with that. Given all I have shown you here, is it any wonder that they are starting to test new ways of fucking up the poor in the media?

Tory leadership contenders have all admitted to taking illegal drugs in the past.

UK War on Poor

Let’s look at why like the US, the UK War on Drugs is as much about left-wing people as it is BAME. The crackdown on working classes taking drugs has been quietly rumbling on since at least 2012.

On the 10th June this year Schools Week reported, “Analysis of teacher misconduct hearings by Schools Week found during Gove’s tenure at least eight teachers were banned for drug-related offences. Four of these included offences relating to cocaine, and three of the four teachers were banned from the profession for life. Decisions to ban teachers are made by somebody acting on behalf of the secretary of state.” This is cokehead Tory leadership candidate Michael Gove’s policy where teachers busted for drugs will be permanently banned from teaching.

It’s long been known you can be chucked out of the military for taking drugs. Only seven months ago the Tories hardened their stance even further: “The Army is introducing a zero-tolerance drugs policy in an effort to ensure “high standards” are maintained, the defence secretary has announced. Gavin Williamson said the use of drugs was “incompatible” with military service, as he announced there would be no more readmissions of former users. Previous rules allowed soldiers sacked for taking illegal drugs to be readmitted if they passed a fresh test.”

What about the police themselves? The Tories got hard on drugs with them in 2012. A memo went out in 2012 saying, “any serving police officer selected in accordance with a regime of routine random testing may be required to provide a sample. This replaces the existing provision for the Secretary of State to specify categories of officers who may be tested.” They get sacked pretty quickly.

Teaching, policing and fighting for your country are up there with the most stressful jobs in the world – and are done by underpaid working class professionals of all races. You can see Tory anti class / drugs policy tensing up like the Evening Standard editor’s dick when he hears “crack whore” whispered.

The dark days coming …

Various US states have tried drug testing people in return for welfare benefits. All have failed, as has the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 which handed research and development of ‘legal highs’ to Chinese drugs boffins working illegally. Given the proven failure of a policy elsewhere is no bar to Tory drugs policy, could we see people being drugs tested every fortnight to get their Universal Credit? I refuse to count this one out. This ‘hard on drugs’ thing worries me a lot more than a pretty 19-year-old intern would who’s been left in a dark room with a tired and emotional BoJo.

Richard is a marijuana, water sports and electric vehicles writer based in Dorchester, Dorset. Living in Prince Charles model housing estate, Poundbury, he is an avowed republican, community and Labour Party activist. Visit his website at www.richardshrubb.com for more about what he does.