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December 2013 |
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drinkers, but they do tend to suffer
more harm as a result’, perhaps
because of a combination with other
issues like tobacco and obesity.
‘This is a fairly frustrating time,’
keynote speaker Alastair Campbell told
the conference. ‘David Cameron came
forward with what looked like a fairly
decent alcohol strategy, and now that’s
not happening. But the thing with
campaigning is you just need to keep
going. The arguments build and build
and just when you the communicators
are sick to death of saying the same
thing over and over again, that’s the
point at which it starts to touch the
outer rim of public consciousness.’
Setbacks were inevitable but it was
vital to ‘keep making the same point’,
he stressed. ‘David Cameron said he
was going to do minimum pricing. He
didn’t, and deep down he probably still
wants to. You just have to keep going.
None of the big campaigns are easy
but you have to keep working until you
reach a tipping point.’ Most people that
campaigners were trying to reach were
not ‘inside your bubble’, he pointed
out. ‘What persuades them in the end
is the power of your arguments. Every
time you make a point you’re landing a
tiny dot on the landscape, and over
time those dots join up.’
Alcohol had been normalised at
every level of society, he said, and the
industry had been very effective at
persuading people that minimum
pricing was regressive and that the
problem did not lie with them. ‘These
arguments have got to be countered,
and it’s about making sure that
governments know. With ministers,
don’t assume too much knowledge –
they’re bombarded all the time, so you
need to get inside their big picture, not
just your own. The change will come if
enough people keep making the same
points. However bad it feels at the
moment, if you keep going you can
get there.’
DDN
‘Justwhenyou, the communicators,
are sick to deathof saying the same
thing over and over again, that’s the
point atwhich it starts to touch the
outer rimof public consciousness.’
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
MEDIASAVVY
WHO’S BEEN SAYINGWHAT..?
After 12 years of fighting, Afghanistan opium production is at a record
high. The UN’s drug agency says that the area under cultivation rose 36
per cent in 2013 and that Afghanistan now provides 90 per cent of the
world’s heroin. The country we invaded partly to liberate it from the
drug trade has become a narco-state.
Telegraph
editorial, 13 November
The trouble with a policy that looks at each drug in turn is that it is simply
overwhelmed by the sheer scale of production of the legal highs. No less
worrying, though, the UK government response effectively leaves young
people as the guinea pigs in their own national experiment; only when
the hospital admission statistics start to mount up will the government
take action. That is a shocking abrogation of responsibility.
Neil McKeganey,
Scotsman
, 4 November
I predicted that we’d soon be deep into ‘personal tragedy’ territory as
the Left tried to play down the louche behaviour of disgraced Co-op
Bank chief, the Reverend Paul Flowers. Needless to say, the
Guardian
loftily dismissed his rent-boy and porn habits and serial drugs abuse as
‘quite separate’ from his stewardship of the bank. The
Grauniad
even
went one better than I imagined and described it as a ‘personal
catastrophe’. My dictionary defines a catastrophe as a sudden disaster,
usually beyond the victim’s control. A tsunami is a catastrophe. Stuffing
the horse tranquilliser ketamine up your nose, using male prostitutes
and fiddling your expenses to the tune of £75,000, all over a period of
years, is not a catastrophe. It’s madness.
Richard Littlejohn,
Mail
, 22 November
The young people of the 70s, 80s and 90s were successively more
prodigious drug-users than their forebears. You have to wonder what they
will do for fun when the kids leave home and the mortgage is paid off.
There may not be an army of older people out there buying drugs like the
former Co-op chairman, but there may be one amassing just over the hill.
Leo Benedictus,
Guardian
, 18 November
Banal theories that cocaine was behind the credit crisis, propagated by
the likes of Professor David Nutt, reveal far more about the critics' own
prejudices than they do about the reality of drug use in the industry.
Seth Freedman,
Guardian
, 18 November
Alcohol is highly toxic to all bodily systems, locks about 10 per cent of users
into addiction and is responsible for more deaths worldwide than either
malaria or Aids. Estimates suggest alcohol-related harm in England costs
the NHS £3.5bn a year. But when it comes to decreasing the potential for
harm, minimum pricing strategies aren’t exactly vote-winners with the
public – and we already know that prohibition fails miserably.
Nat Guest,
Independent
, 13 November
Iain Duncan Smith is unfit for work. Not even an Atos test would pass Mr
Cruel Incompetence as capable of doing a job. The courts regularly rule
his Department for Work and Pensions is breaking the law. And his
regular bullying of the disabled should earn IDS an Asbo.
Kevin Maguire,
Mirror
, 11 November