Pubdate: Tue, 26 Oct 2004
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Zoe Williams, The Guardian
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

A CLASS ACT OF DRUG ABUSE

I find it very hard to get worked up about cocaine use, and harder
still to get outraged about punching members of the paparazzi in the
face. Those pap guys love getting punched - they have facial scarring
instead of CVs. I also find it hard to get exercised about the
activities of young royals, or anyone connected with them, though I do
seem to have an uncanny memory for what they've been up to.

So, when James Green, one-time boyfriend of Princess Beatrice of
somewhere (does she have a somewhere?), was kicked out of Harrow for
taking coke in a local restaurant, it reminded me in passing of some
other toffs who've been nobbled for non-prescription drugs. Tom Parker
Bowles, son of Camilla, admitted cocaine use in 1999; Lord Frederick
Windsor, 28th in line to the throne, also admitted using the drug in
1999; Tara Palmer-Tomkinson regaled the world at around this time with
tales of her cocaine addiction, though she'd become rather pantomimey
thanks to her hard-won public profile, so the news didn't seem to rock
the establishment that much.

You may be wondering what that has to do with Harry "Don't call him
the Party Prince" Windsor, whose recent antics were nothing to do with
cocaine, and everything to do with mild assault. The connection is
that all this behaviour is illegal. All those new initiatives, where
you can ban people from city centres for "yob-like" acts such as
talking too loud, drinking too much, dressing in matching Burberry
check in a sinister fashion, fail to take into account the most
salient point. There's just no call for new laws or initiatives: we
have all the laws we need to lock up as many young and boisterous
people as we like. But, ah yes - they're the wrong sort of young people.

Frederick Windsor made a telling remark in apology for his drug
disgrace: "I admit it is true. It is very difficult to avoid getting
into this sort of thing when you move in these circles, but I don't
blame anyone else for the incident." Well. That's big of him. The
interesting bit of that statement is "when you move in these circles".
All of us, including the rich themselves, have a tendency to think of
this set as a loose, ham-fisted cross between Brideshead and F Scott
Fitzgerald. They have different rules of moral engagement, since
everything they do is filed under the ethically neutral category of
impossible glamour.

It's all such revolting nonsense - cocaine doesn't limit itself to any
social circle. There's absolutely nothing exclusive or glamorous about
it. Everyone, everywhere who is slightly too old to drink all night
without falling over takes this banal and workaday drug. It's as cheap
as chips. Plus, you can offset the cost of the chips that you didn't
have to buy because the coke killed your appetite.

Likewise, everyone, everywhere, who's had a lot to drink and gets
discombobulated by some rude jostling might consider throwing a punch.
It has nothing at all to do with "facing pressure as a young man
trying to make his way in the world", or whatever other guff the
palace spokesman came out with on Harry's behalf. All of this is
caused by straightforward, standard-issue over-indulgence. It does not
relate to class in any way, but the way we react to it varies wildly,
according to the parentage of the culprit.

We affect great moral outrage when it comes from the upper classes,
but we would rarely take a guy like James Green to be emblematic of a
breakdown in wider society. People only tub-thump about social
disintegration when they're talking about delinquency from the working
classes. The shock reaction to delinquency from the rich is of a much
more fawning, lickspittle kind, which ultimately amounts to: "You
people are supposed to be setting us an example!"

Nobody ever talks about "trends" or "crime waves" in relation to the
rich, even though if Beatrice's boyfriend, Prince Charles's common-law
stepson and Princess Michael of Kent's firstborn are at it, you can be
damn sure they're not the only ones. Waves of drug use only ever occur
among the proles. Is this because there are so many more poor people
than there are rich ones, and we're just applying an uncharacteristic
rigour to our use of words like "wave"? Or is it because we see the
working classes as an undifferentiated and uncontrollable mass, and
the upper classes as these exotic individuals, who - gasp! - did a bad
thing in front of the servants.

On balance, I think drugs should be legal and photographers should
have better manners. But pending those twin improvements I'd like to
see these "circles" of young aristos being marched to cash points and
fined, being banned from city centres, maybe getting slapped with an
Asbo and barred from hanging out together, even in respectable
gatherings involving ponies. Our double standards are confounding
and, worse, horribly passe.
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