The manager of a soup kitchen who was attacked by a drug dealer has called for people to reject the “fashionable lie” that drugs are harmless.
Martin Stone manages the Muswell Hill Soup Kitchen in London, which serves up to 40 people a night, and somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000 meals a year.
He says when you “scratch the surface” of people’s life stories, “almost all of the homeless I meet have one big problem: addiction”.
‘Fashionable lie’
Stone said that “those who blithely dismiss recreational drugs as a harmless bit of fun are either wilfully ignorant of the damage they cause, or else they are unspeakable hypocrites”.
“Drugs aren’t harmless”
He added: “That’s why it it’s time we exposed the fashionable lie that cocaine and other drugs are glamorous.
“Drugs aren’t harmless – they are highly destructive and it’s only by accepting this that we can start to build a culture where buying or using illegal drugs becomes socially unacceptable”.
‘Wrong message’
It comes as the SNP says it will now make the decriminalisation of illegal drugs official party policy.
The Liberal Democrats have also campaigned for drug decriminalisation since 2014, when the then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called for drugs to be treated as a “health issue”.
To date, the Government has maintained it will not change its position on drugs legalisation.
A Home Office spokesman said last year: “Decriminalisation or legalisation would send the wrong message to the vast majority of people who do not take drugs, especially young and vulnerable people”.