Happy new year, dear reader. I'm back from a research trip/holiday into the wilds of regional Australia. What can I say about it? For one thing it's not so damn humid as Sydney, he said, dripping with sweat even with the fan on full.
While I was away education minister Verity Firth's husband, Matthew Chesher, was arrested for allegedly buying one tablet of 'ecstasy'. What he actually bought we may never know because prohibition means drug supply is unregulated and provided, by definition, by criminals.
The stupidity of this arrest and the predictable outcry of horror from hypocritical politicians and journalists made me roll my eyes. Don't forget that true ecstasy (MDMA) carries less risk than peanuts according to New Scientist.
At least this farce, and waste of public money, has spawned a number of enlightened articles, notably this one by Alex Wodak, in which he describes how this incident would have been a complete non-event in countries like Portugal where drug use is treated as a personal health matter and remedial intervention occurs only when the user is dysfunctional.
But one popular blogger, Jack Marx, really nailed it with an acerbic piece that neatly compares the damage and mayhem caused by this arrest with the alternative had it not occurred -- that a bloke probably would have had a great evening.
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