"It is astonishing that a young man who
has occasionally drunk too much and smoked cannabis should be treated as some
kind of moral degenerate. Prince Harry has been forced to attend a drug
rehabilitation clinic, and will now be subject to random drug testing at his
school. These are humiliations and violations of privacy that must have far
more serious effects on the development of his character than almost any
amount of experiment with mood-altering substances.
"Moreover, the way in
which Prince Harry has been treated encourages the similar treatment of other
young men in his situation. Already, the statements from St James's Palace
have been taken up by the usual crowd of health fascists, and used to justify
their demands for still more of our tax money to waste and still more of our
lives to control.
"Prince Harry is now
17, and was no younger than 16 when he allegedly first experimented with
cannabis. We believe that, at these ages, individuals are old enough to make
their own choices regarding lifestyle, and strongly condemn the use of any
coercive attempt to regulate lifestyle at these ages.
"Needless to say, the
Libertarian Alliance believes that all drugs should be re-legalised - taking
us back to the freedom of choice that individuals enjoyed before 1920. Prince
Harry is simply the latest and the highest profile victim of a war on drugs
that cannot be won, but that allows a war on freedom and dignity that has
destroyed millions of lives in the past 80 years, created super profits for
criminal enterprise, and corrupted the police forces and intelligence agencies
of every nation.
"Returning to the case
of Prince Harry, we do hope that if the Crown Prosecution Service is to be
involved, it will treat him as leniently as it did the son of the Home
Secretary in 1998 when he was caught not only consuming but also dealing
drugs."
