Mephedrone madness

Our misgovernors put out their latest twaddle on mephedrone recently at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/dha/police/newoffencesconce.xml , though curiously it took until yesterday to make it onto local community news bulletins like Manxnet.
As a committed libertarian it goes without saying I ignore such nonsense on principle. I never take a blind bit of notice of any law concerning matters that responsible consenting adults should make their own minds up about.
Never have, never will. Period.
What annoys me more is the stupid, tabloid and drug czar career-driven panic around it. Yet again, in a Guardian piece by a former UK government drugs advisor yesterday (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/09/flawed-thinking-mephedrone ) it was pointed out that, contrary to the growing tabloid hysteria, nobody has died directly from Mephedrone use.
They have died from other health problems while taking it, or from the combined effects of drug and alcohol cocktails including it. As with Ecstasy, where people die of exhaustion or lack of water in a nightclub where the bottled variety costs more than a pint of bitter in one of those old-fashioned pub thingies (which the young no longer go to because they don’t exist or are full of geriatric Torygraph readers).
In other words, dumb, unhealthy people do dumb things and drop dead afterwards. Their choice. Sad, cruel, Darwinian even, but not my business, not your business and definitely not the state’s business. Another drone didn’t turn up for underpaid drudgework on Monday, another student failed to graduate and spend decades paying off a student loan working in a call centre.
And the government’s problem is…....... a written off investment?
Well it wasn’t their investment, or their choice, it was ours, and as far as I can see the only folk creating about it are (a) people with a career interest in a moral panic and (b) people who live off public money and never even tried to better themselves. Same thing really.
What makes it worse is that criminalising what was, previously, at least a substance available from high street retailers in relatively standardised form means it will, in future, be controlled by criminals. Who will cut it with any white powder or cheaply available illegal drug to hand and….. well, kill people.
In other words, as a result of government incompetence and careerist anti-drug specialists, kids who previously experimented with something dodgy to play the rebel without high risk now have to go to the criminal community. And if they’re offered something cheaper, but nastier, they will probably take it.
Wow, aren’t you glad the folk we pay to look out for our kids are so bright!
Actually, when it comes to the Chief Minister and his numbskull ‘drug task force’, I’ll be glad if they ever learn to walk without scraping their knuckles.