Pamela Anderson just admitted – wait for it – that she’d had coke in the past.

What? Really? I mean gosh, you think you can trust celebrities, and then they admit that they were once into such a hardcore partying lifestyle.

What a farce. Why are we pretending to be outraged when every D list celebrity and up has embraced the celebrity lifestyle by getting off their face!

Kate Moss gets snapped snorting and it’s all over the papers. Katherine Jenkins, everyone’s favourite hot Welsh opera singer, also admitted it recently. Cue hushed whispers between friends and headlines on the Daily Mail and all the other classy news-sources. But it’s just the done thing so why all the fuss?

Drugs have always had a glorified image, and the celeb stuff certainly adds to the street cred, which is why us friendly mortals get on the bandwagon.

I don’t really know where I’m heading with this, I think I just wanted to have a rant. Sorry Sandi! Really liked the article though, clearly it provoked my thoughts!

Drugs are always going to be a controversial issue, but the manner of controversy can differ between people. The fact of their illegality is often the sole reference point touched on when discussing the morality of use, i.e. – drugs are bad because they’re illegal. That, to me, is a poor argument, not least because soft drugs are legal in some countries, in much the same way that the legal age of consumption of alcohol differs between nations. The fact that I could go into a bar and buy alcohol in Australia at 18 but would have been prohibited from doing so had I travelled to America at the same age says nothing about the morality of whether I or anyone else should drink to begin with; only that the age limit was determined arbitrarily, or at least differently, between countries. So, to take pot as an example: if I went to Amsterdam and got stoned, where such behaviour is legal, is my behaviour still reprehensible? Or has the benevolence of the law suddenly put my actions on a different level?

Addiction and use are two separate things. If you can accept that it’s possible to drink alcohol without being an alcoholic, and if you can simultaneously acknowledge that alcohol is a drug to which some people are addicted, you should be able to make the same argument about pot, for instance, or ecstacy. It’s inarguably true that some drugs, legal or not, are stronger than others: their effects more severe, the chances of addiction higher, the risks greater, and that’s a factor which should always be taken into consideration. There are different categories of drug – some naturally occuring, like mushrooms or peyote, some chemically created, like meth or heroine, some adulterated/distilled from natural substances, like opium, and some souped-up versions of existing intoxicants, like hydroponic marijuana. To class all these things under the one umbrella of ‘drugs’ and treat them as if these distictions didn’t exist, however, is like putting a dog, a cat, a horse and an elephant in the one zoo exhibit and referring to them all as ‘mammals’ – technically accurate, but ultimately unhelpful.

In Australia, significantly more people a year are killed by cars than by illegal drugs. Addiction is nothing to be taken lightly, but part of what frustrates me so much about the whole drugs debate is the unwillingness of people to distinguish recreational use from addiction in the dialogue, when clearly, it’s a relevant distinction to make. If it weren’t, neither alcohol nor cigarettes would be legal, or everyone who bought either substance would be addicted to it. In cases where addiction does accur, I’d also contend that the ability of friends and family to intervene and for the user to come forward without legal repercussion is pivotal to early diagnosis and help – certainly, this is true of alcohol. The fact that users of illegal substances are automatically in danger of stigma and professional repercussion has nothing to do with an intrinsic moral failing on their behalf, and everything to do with legality.

My own position is that there is greater benefit to be had from legalising soft drugs, at the very least, than from keeping them illegal, for the above reasons and others. Nobody should be forced to take drugs, drink or smoke because of peer pressure, but the fact that some people do so does not put them in the majority of users, nor does it mean that every voluntary user is automatically an addict or a corrupting influence. I’d love to see more discussion about drugs: it’s an important topic, and one that isn’t going away. Our generation isn’t the only one to have tackled the question, and I don’t think we’re the most hard hit by it for that reason. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes and brains open.