Two contenders in the Tory leadership race have now admitted to taking drugs. Michael Gove has owned up to snorting cocaine on multiple occasions, while Rory Stewart admits that he smoked opium.
Now I'm certainly not going to moral high horse about drug use because I'm a strong believer in rational drugs policy aimed at regulation, harm reduction, and treatment rather than the prohibitionist orthodoxy of unregulated black markets, criminalisation, and imprisonment.
But it's impossible not to clock the absolute hypocrisy of these men.
They've both served in a militantly prohibitionist Tory regime for nine years which not only maintained draconian punishments for possession and use of the very Class A substances like cocaine and opioids they've admitted using, but actually introduced a raft of harsh new punishments on substances like the mild stimulant khat (which is mainly used by the Somalian immigrant community) despite their own scientific advisers pointing out that khat is such a mild stimulant that it would be inappropriate and disproportionate to criminalise it [source].
One of the most absurd new anti-drugs laws these hypocritical Tories supported was Theresa May's kafkaesque legislation banning all drugs that haven't even been invented yet!
These hypocrites believe in other people suffering severe criminal punishments for possession of mild and virtually harmless stimulants and even drugs that don't even exist yet, but feel absolutely fine snorting cocaine and smoking opioids themselves!
These Tories firmly believe in criminalisation and imprisonment for thousands upon thousands of people from poor and ordinary backgrounds for using much less harmful and addictive substances such as cannabis, magic mushrooms, khat, MDMA, and mephedrone, while they've used much more harmful and addictive drugs like cocaine and opiods without the slightest worry that they'd ever end up in jail for it.
Politicians like Gove and Stewart support the draconian prohibitionist orthodoxy because they quite simply don't believe that the laws apply to people like them in the elitist establishment class.
As far as they're concerned the drug laws exist in order to keep the "lower orders" in line, while the wealthy and privileged like them can do whatever they like with absolute impunity.
So it's not the fact that they've used drugs, it's the sheer hypocrisy of these wannabe Prime Ministers actively supporting harsh prohibitionist drug laws for ordinary people because they know that the rules simply don't apply to elitists like them.
Who on earth wants to be led by people who believe in one harsh and punitive set of rules for the majority of us, and another extremely lax and forgiving set of rules just for them and their elitist mates?
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