Drugs

Allegations that Nigella Lawson used cocaine and prescription drugs on a habitual basis have emerged in court today after the trial judge lifted a reporting restriction. Lawson's former personal assistants Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo are accused of fraud by Charles Saatchi, Lawson's former husband. The court heard, in pre-trial hearings, evidence for the defence which apparently shows that Saatchi accepts the Grillo sisters' argument that Lawson had allowed them to spend more than £300,000 on the proviso that they did not divulge details of her drug use to him.

Tonight, the Spectator will host a debate on the motion: ‘Addiction is not a disease’.  Damian Thompson, Theodore Dalrymple and Dr Aric Sigman will lock horns with Trinny Woodall, Dominic Ruffy and Vic Watts to decide whether addiction is a medical condition or a pattern of immoderate behaviour. The extraordinary story of Reverend Flowers is likely to feature in the discussions. As Melanie Phillips writes in this week’s Spectator cover piece: ‘So what about all those drugs and orgies? The behaviour which even his former rent boy described as ‘debauched’? How could a man with such predilections have got away with being a Methodist minister for 40 years?

Since 2011, the Silk Road has infuriated governments the world over by allowing digital pirates to operate above the law. It has been – in effect – an eBay for Afghani heroin, cocaine and all manner of illegal goods. Hosted in the virtual tunnels of the ‘Deep Web’, transactions are made in BitCoin and up until yesterday, it was doing roughly 60,000 a day. But now, it seems, the cops have swooped. Yesterday afternoon Ross William Ulbricht, known by the pseudonym ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ was arrested – on charge of being the owner. Drugs were the site’s bread and butter, making up 70 percent of sales. But you could buy all manner of items including art, erotica and jewellery; banned copies of 18th century literature occasionally circulated.

Another summer, another reminder of the consequences of our drug laws: A man has been arrested in connection with the death of an 18-year-old who had taken fake ecstasy tablets. The woman died in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, on Tuesday. She and three friends had taken green tablets with a Rolex Crown logo on them. Similar tablets have been linked to the deaths of six other people in the west of Scotland in the past two months. Of course, no-one needs to purchase ecstasy and primary responsibility for these horrid deaths lies with the people who manufactured these pills. Nevertheless, unscrupulous (and stupid) suppliers are not the only culpable actors in this sorry tragedy. Parliamentarians share some blame too.

The ‘fake-sheik’ has pulled off another classic sting operation, worthy of his time at the News of the World. Mazher Mahmood can add Tulisa Contostavlos, the 'musician’ turned X-Factor judge, to his hit list today after she was arrested 'by appointment' earlier this afternoon following allegations of drug dealing made in The Sun on Sunday. Tulisa and a 35-year-old man are being held in custody in central London. As the summer breeze blows begins to away the chill caused by Sir Brian Leveson, it seems that newspapers are increasingly willing to take risks. This will come as blow for our grubbier celebrities and politicians, who have had an easy ride for the last two years.

In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Leo McKinstry argues that Britain is dropping all its most harmful habits. Here is an excerpt: 'According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in the effluence of moral collapse. We inhabit a country supposedly awash with vice and decadence. If we aren’t playing poker or bingo on our computer screens, then we are watching pornography. Our streets are said to be dominated by betting shops and lap-dancing clubs, by drug addicts and binge-drinkers. Yet for all its hold on the popular imagination, the idea of worsening degeneracy in modern Britain is not backed up by the evidence. Our society is becoming less disordered and depraved.

Gripped by his habitual despair, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote to a friend in 1872, ‘I am appalled at the state of society. I’m filled with the sadness that must have affected the Romans of the 4th century. I feel irredeemable barbarism rising from the bowels of the earth.’ Warming to his bleak scatological theme, he continued, ‘I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.’ Many commentators would feel that exactly the same words could be applied to modern Britain. According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in the effluence of moral collapse. We inhabit a country supposedly awash with vice and decadence.

Does this advert ring a bell? It showed a handsome young man hitting a cricket ball far into the distance. It appeared on the Tube last spring. The tagline read: ‘How far can you hit it, Rory?’ The advert said that the young man was Rory Hamilton-Brown, captain of Surrey County Cricket Club. It urged commuters to watch his team play. It suggested glamour and clamour; neither of which is associated with stolid county cricket. Something was afoot. Hamilton-Brown had been appointed three years earlier, aged 22, to rejuvenate Surrey, a once great club wandering in the wilderness. He was the youngest captain in the country, and one of the most famous, despite not having played for England – the traditional mark of success.