DEREK Lehane is dead. His death is listed in the fastest-growing folder in The Irish Times library, the drugs file. The issue of this newspaper which carried the full story of Derek's death from an accidental overdose of the illegal drug ecstasy reported the death of another young man from substance abuse. He was not named. The file which mentions, without detail, his death grows very slowly; for that death was a virtually invisible event, concealed within a more general story.
What is the difference between Derek Lehane, substance abuser, and A.N. Other, substance abuser? The difference is that the substance A.N. Other abused, and which took his life, was called a motorbike. The use of motorbikes by young people is not criminal; but they nonetheless kill many more people than all the drugs combined, both absolutely and relatively.
If we added motorcars to the list of substances which are fatally abused by young people, then the disproportion of "legal" deaths of young people over the illegal becomes simply ludicrous. But this is not discussed because somehow or other the notion has spread, and has achieved political respectability as inviolable as the notion of legal equality of the sexes, that young males should be allowed to drive cars and motorbikes, with no greater restrictions than those enjoyed by middle-aged headmistresses.
Unleashing testosterone
This is self-evidently ludicrous. A car for a middle-aged headmistress is a form of transport. For a 20-year-old-male petrolhead, a car is a drug taken externally, a drug which stimulates his already overcharged endocrinal system and encourages him to unleash his testosterone those extra few notches.
Letting young men drive on public thoroughfares with no particular restriction on their speed is like pretending that bulls are the same as cows. Show me the farmer who thinks they are, and you're showing me a headstone.
Yet a browse through the file marked motor-accidents soon tells you that two sorts of people are particularly inclined to die from this form of substance abuse - young male drivers and old pedestrians in rural areas. No doubt the deaths of geriatrics tottering across unlit roads at night is something society can accept with equanimity. I say it can, because it does.
Nobody seems the least perturbed at the slaughter of the old, the slow, very possibly the lonely as they seek out company at night. They form an unimportant constituency in Irish life. The days get shorter, the temperature lower, the old folk slower: slam, and call in the undertaker.
Reflective Gear
I say the following with the utmost diffidence, for the history of government initiatives in new areas, whether it is eradicating TB, running blood transfusion services, or policing the beef-processing industry is, to say the least, unpropitious; but might there not be a case for the Government issuing all old people with reflective gear, so that the over-hormoned youngster engaged in substance-abuse with Daddy's Beamer at least has the chance of seeing them - and who knows, even avoiding them? At least that way he has a choice, to hit or miss and even the most over-testosteroned Young Male, given a choice, will probably prefer not to dent the Beamer bonnet.
But of course it should not be up to the YM. We should have learned that, actuarially, a vastly disproportionate number of motor accidents is caused by YMs. Should YMs be allowed equal access with the rest of us to motorbikes and motorcars? Listen to the people who know best: not the fine folk in government, but the insurance companies. They say No.
But they have to say No carefully. To do so carelessly would be to invite scrutiny under the laws against sex discrimination. If you are going to break the law - which is what the insurance companies are all doing now - make sure you break it in the right direction. That is, introduce insurance weightings" against young people, who are unquestionably the authors of an absurd number of accidents; but then lift the weighting for women, under some illegal but politically acceptable let-out clause called Ladydrive.
No male in the land has yet had the nerve to sue the insurance companies for sex discrimination; though an individual's court action would not be necessary if the sex being discriminated against in this matter were female.
Howl of Indignation
For then the Government would step in, Ministers would shake their weighty jowls in disapproval at this flagrant discrimination against women, equality-columnists would howl in indignation and the Minister: for Equality would come cantering over the horizon, brandishing his lance of egalitarianism.
But since the victims of the insurance companies' sexual discrimination are men, what matter? To my mind, none. If a category of driver can be identified as causing a disproportionate number of accidents, should that category not be restricted by law? Yes.
Forget the humbuggery of equality. No essential civil liberty is lost if male drivers under 30 be restricted to 30m.p.h. We might even keep a few old people intact, as is their twilit entitlement. What old people have died because of E? None.
The same file which contains the death of Derek Lehane on alternating days reports the triumphant and ringing success of things called outreach programmes which are all so redolent of American press coverage of village pacification in the early days of the Vietnam war. And on the other days it reports on the procession of youngsters through the courts) ie, the return of the Viet Cong at night.
Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of youngsters took E over Christmas. One died: Derek. In the same period, six young males died in motor accidents. It is not a question of liking E. It is a question of coming to terms with reality. The criminalisation of drugs has not eliminated drugs in certain areas; but it has most certainly eliminated the rule of law from those areas.