ANY despondency caused by the gloomy tidings on the front page of the July 18 edition ("Terror attack on exchange students") will have been dispelled by reading on page seven that not only did police smash their way into a house to seize cannabis plants but that 14 police officers with sniffer dogs are being deployed to detect "traces of illegal substances".
As the late lamented Henry Root would have said: "well done."
This excellent news will gladden the heart of every public-spirited citizen. Every way one turns the plaintive cry is heard, "preserve us all from illegal substances".
We accept th
at, as befits our lapsarian state, we must bear in silence such things as burglary, violence, vandalism and country and western music. But nothing is more cruelly calculated to blight the sunshine of our daily lives than the thought that someone, somewhere, might be in possession of an illegal substance.
Thus we fervently hope that our law officers will be provided with as many dogs as it takes – yes, and battering rams and bazookas, too – to rid us of this noisesome pestilence that is for ever on all our minds.
For it is only when every last trace of such substances has been extirpated, so that we may accept a bank note without being in fear and trembling of its having been contaminated, and may enjoy the society of our fellow subjects secure in the knowledge that none of them has been ingesting or smoking plants that have been declared taboo by the authorities, whose infallible wisdom in all matters is universally acknowledged, that we shall sleep soundly in our beds.
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