Unmasked: McMaf ia’s real Mr Big
I AM still not sure what to make of the BBC’s expensive drama McMafia. So far, it strikes me as more anti-Israeli than anti-Russian, though the Czech government and police might also have grounds for complaint.
But like all crime thrillers which draw attention to mighty evils caused by the drug trade, it ignores the real Mr Big of this very nasty business.
For that Mr Big is actually made up of millions of heedless people in this country, in the USA, and throughout Europe.
These are the ones who buy and use drugs in the first place, pouring in the colossal amounts of cash which the gangs then fight over. These individual buyers are in fact criminals.
Yet their crime is seldom if ever attacked on the BBC, either in its dramas or in its news and current affairs broadcasts. It is well known that nobody at the BBC takes drugs, which makes its attitude hard to explain.
The police do not arrest users and the courts do not punish them. In fact we as a society make excuses for them.
The latest of these is a ridiculous report claiming that critical attitudes towards drug abusers are a form of ‘discrimination’. The grandly-titled Global Commission on Drug Policy, a self-appointed assembly of has-beens and suckers, says that users of heroin – possession of which can in theory put you in prison for seven years – should be described as having a ‘disorder’.
It whines: ‘Public perception is that drug use, including problematic drug use, is a choice and that individuals choose not to control it, i.e. not to stop.’
Well, yes, that is what sensible people think. Whose interests will it serve if this sort of common sense is stamped out?