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PETER HITCHENS: The real cause of knife crime? It's hidden in a fog of cannabis smoke
PETER HITCHENS: The real cause of knife crime? It's hidden in a fog of cannabis smoke
By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 01:17 GMT, 10 March 2019 | UPDATED: 09:27 GMT, 10 March
Does any powerful person in this country ever think? It has been quite astonishing watching the alleged debate about knife crime over the past few days. Not a single thought took place.
The crime has been rare because nobody wanted to commit it. Yet now we have a significant minority who do not recoil. So what has changed?
It is not because knives are more easily available. There have always been plenty of knives. You do not need some menacing, wickedly curved weapon to end a life.
Every home in this country contains blades that could kill, in the hands of a person who wanted to use them that way.
The crucial factor is his willingness to use it.
The problem has, in fact, been growing for years, concealed by the brilliant skills of our paramedics and doctors. Night after night, they have saved the lives of appalling numbers of stab victims.
If we still had the medical facilities and techniques of 50 years ago, this change would have been obvious for some time.
So what is it that has changed? School exclusions? No. Global warming? No. Police numbers? Oh, forgive me while I laugh. The police have been absent from the streets of this country for decades now, reacting to crime after it happens and so losing control of it.
The modern copper would rather be on a squad, investigating claims that the late Ted Heath, or some other corpse, was a paedophile.
Here is the problem. We are told that stabbings are at their worst since 1945. This is itself untrue. The year 1945 is chosen because that was when figures on stabbings began to be collected. In reality, they are the worst figures since this became a civilised country under the Victorians, really the worst figures since an unpoliced London was roamed by armed footpads, and highwaymen haunted the country roads.
In a way, they are even worse than then. This is, by comparison with those times, a rich and settled society. But in an important way, we are worse. We have drugs. These drugs do not just intoxicate, as alcohol does. They make their users mentally ill, irrational, uninhibited, careless of the consequences of what they do.
No, not every marijuana smoker goes out and kills. So what? Not every boozer gets into fights, or commits rape, or kills people with drunken driving. Not every cigarette smoker gets cancer or heart disease. But we act against these things because of the significant minority who do cause or experience these tragic outcomes.
And almost all of those who go out and kill someone with a blade will turn out, once the investigation is over, to be a long-term user of marijuana, no longer wholly sane or wholly civilised. Its widespread use is the only significant social change in this country that correlates with the rise in homicidal violence.
They are not tough, Minister, because they are not enforced. They just look tough. Everyone in the world knows they are not tough, except for the Government.
Please, please, please try actually thinking.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...bis-smoke.html
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