The bigger picture

I was getting rather depressed and despairing about the state of the world, pondering over all the terrible problems people are struggling with - poverty, violence, sex trafficking, drug addiction, the list is endless.

Then suddenly I realised the reason for my despair was that I was only looking at one half of the picture. I was only looking at the problems while totally ignoring all the efforts to improve things.

Yes, people are dealing with huge problems but there are thousands of organisations around the world devoted to reducing those problems and salvaging people's lives.

I remind myself that poverty for instance is being tackled by dozens of organisations. Oxfam alone has 21 branches across the world, including Oxfam GB which in 2016/17 had a total income of £408.6m, with 5,000 employees and 23,000 volunteers. Among other things, Oxfam is a global leader in providing water sanitation to impoverished and war-torn areas.

I also remind myself of the hundreds of research projects into horrible diseases like Ebola, multiple sclerosis, cancer and dementia.

I know many people are rather cynical about charities, suggesting for example that too much of their money goes into administration and executive salaries rather than the good causes the public's donations are intended for. But nevertheless they make a big difference to the millions of lives blighted by dire circumstances.

So now that I'm seeing the wider picture, seeing solutions as well as problems, seeing all the help going to those who urgently need it, I feel a lot more cheerful and optimistic.

Unfortunately that wider picture tends to be ignored by the media, which much prefers to focus on dreadful disasters rather than the organisations that come to the rescue.

No wonder despair is so common, But it doesn't have to be.

Drugs furore

Should leisure drugs be legal or illegal? The debate is raging yet again after the sacking of David Nutt, a government adviser on drugs policy.

This journalist is urging complete legalisation of leisure drugs on the basis that adults should be free to consume whatever they want, at their own risk.

It's a tricky argument, mainly because nobody knows exactly what the effects of going legal would be. Would it make little difference, or would there be many more people taking drugs and possibly ruining their lives?

It seems to me that the prediction of lots more druggies and lots more social decline is probably half-baked scaremongering. Yes, we would replace the existing problems with some new ones, but the new ones would be much easier to manage and not so damaging.

All the harmful effects of illegality - contaminated drugs, unintentional overdoses, unhygienic consumption and gang warfare - would be drastically reduced. But it's also true that going legal might encourage more people to take leisure drugs, and health and social problems may increase.

Hang on, though. Yes, consumption might increase, but under much safer conditions, so the chance of coming to harm would be much less. It would be more like taking prescription drugs, with all the rigorous controls that apply to them.

And the argument that adults should be free to ingest whatever's on offer is a strong one. If we're free to eat junk food or slimming pills or herbal remedies, why shouldn't leisure drugs be on the menu?

Intelligent adults are capable of assessing the pros and cons of the drugs in question and deciding whether to accept the risks or not. Why should the state make the choices for us?

But leisure drugs won't be legalised any time soon. The government is terrified of what it might unleash. They prefer the status quo with all its stink of crime and trickery.