Jacqui Smith today unveiled a new strategy in the 'War On Drugs'.
The Press Association: Plan to cut drug addicts' benefits
This time we are going to see addicts lose their benefits if they do not get clean. Well, that should work! After all every other Government initiative to tackle drug use/abuse has been a resounding success! REHABILITATION CENTRES TO FORCE COLD TURKEY ON THEM WOULD BETTER THAN CUTTING THEIR MONEY WHICH WILL BE NO USE AT ALL, I AGREE.
It does not seem to have occured to Ms Smith that an addict with no income will need to commit even more crime in order to live AND feed their habit! Thus we will have even more drug fuelled aquisitive crime on our streets. But hey! The headline writers for the Daily Mail should be happy for a day or two!
This masterstroke of Governmental thinking has a ten year timeline. (At least Stalin had the decency to stick to 'Glorious Five Year Plans'!) So in otherwords it will be quietly forgotten about in eighteen months or so. There is precedent for this; anyone remember the foreign prisoner scandal and the special squad that was formed to round up all the ex-cons who should have been deported? That was quietly disbanded after about six weeks. Also Jacqui Smith will probably have moved onto another cushy political job by then (Brussels anyone?) so it's inevitable failure will not get laid at her door.
I remember the bright glorious morning of 1997 when the newly elected Saint Tony of Blair promised us a 'Drug Tsar' who was going to rid our society of the scourge of drugs. Does anyone remember what happened to him? Or the drugs he was so bravely going to rid us of? YES, HE GAVE UP AFTER A SHORT TIME BECAUSE HE SAID THEY WOULD NOT GIVE HIM THE MANPOWER OR THE MONEY TO DO THE JOB OF GETTING PEOPLE OFF DRUGS. THEY NEED A NEW ''DRUGS TZAR'' PERSON AND THIS TIME GIVE HIM THE MANPOWER AND THE MONEY.
Dealers will also lose their assets
before any conviction in the courts! Well, we'll see what the 'Yuman Rights' lawyers have to say about that! Dosen't clause 2 of the Yuman Rights Act say something like "No person shall be unlawfully deprived of the peacefull enjoyment of their possessions"?
Now I don't have crystal balls, but I reckon this might just be another government by headline style effort that will end in ignoble failure!