It is often said that drugs fuel a third of property crime (addicts thieving to pay for their habit). If this is true, then we have an argument for legalising drugs which no social authoritarian can easily answer.

Yes, legalising drugs would reduce property crime and would put many organised criminals out of business. It would also remove dangerous impurities from the drugs themselves and cean up the blighted politics in countries like Columbia.

Prohibitionists argue that drugs are inherently dangerous. Well, they are, to a greater or lesser degree, but no-one has come close to finding a way of suppressing the supply (let alone the demand).

Some of the more extreme prohibtionists argue that the taking of drugs is morally wicked and should be suppressed for that reason alone, no matter what the consequences.

Well, sorry. I can't find any moral issue here. If someone decides to harm himself, that's his affair and his alone, is it not? Well, for a libertarian, it is. But not for neo-Hegelians who regard any kind of social deviance as a threat to society (like Paul Johnson, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens or Roger Scruton).

What we have in the drugs debate is a bedrock of social authoritarian belief and an overwhelming fear of tabloid wrath.

Any politician who told the truth about drugs would immediately be denounced by Dacre and co as a dangerous public enemy and hounded out of office.