PETER HITCHENS: Kate's addict comments show our moral system is broken

Whatever happened to Royal neutrality? The Royal Family has keenly joined the side of the liberal Left, starting with the global warming frenzy and now moving on to the disastrous appeasement of the drugs lobby.

The Princess of Wales last week called for an end to the 'stigma' surrounding 'addiction'.

She urged us to offer 'empathy and support' to those 'dependent' on alcohol, drugs or gambling.

Our future Queen proclaimed that 'addiction' was 'not a choice or a personal failing, but a complex mental health condition that should be met with empathy and support'.

She complained that 'even now in 2025, people's experience of addiction is shaped by fear, shame and judgment. This needs to change'.

Does it? This is a highly contentious opinion and the supposedly neutral Royal Family should stay out of such things.

We already treat criminal drug abusers pretty gently, and lo! the more we do this, the more of them we have.

Yet the world is full of people who have used their will and character to conquer so-called addictions.

Countless thousands in my generation have given up smoking, a very hard habit to break. Yet they did it. Enormous numbers of American soldiers, who were thought to be heroin 'addicts' in Vietnam, stopped using the drug when they got home from that foul war, without any help.

What then of the supposedly terrifying withdrawal symptoms of which we hear so much? Can it be that they have been overstated by people with an axe to grind?

The wicked, destructive idea that we are all powerless to fight against bad choices is the basis of our current accelerating slide into disorder. It has smashed our moral system and turned criminal justice into a cardboard fake.

For 60 years now, much crime has been excused as the helpless response of the poor or unlucky to their sad conditions.

The idea that it is deliberate, selfish wrongdoing, which could be deterred by punishment, has been hidden away in the cupboard of the yesterdays.

There is hardly a form of bad behaviour, from swearing to taking illegal drugs, which is not excused by a matching syndrome or disorder.

Alas, the new regime has no cure for these alleged complaints, so they just grow more common.

During those six decades, every sort of crime and cruelty has increased beyond anything the British people of 1965 could have imagined. But it is not just crime which is emptied of blame. Almost every type of selfishness or of weakness gets the same treatment.

Above all it is applied to the takers of illegal drugs. And it is constantly suggested that such drug abusers are cruelly persecuted by the law, which – we are told – throws them into cells for their actions.

Well, it isn't true. We have for many years treated this crime as a disease and those who commit it as powerless victims.

Governments in the UK spend hundreds of millions on drug 'treatment' every year. Does it work? Not very well.

How many of these undoubted offenders were prosecuted? There are no centralised figures, probably for the very good reason that the answer is 'hardly any'. These criminals inflict misery on their neighbours and their families. Sometimes they steal.

Sometimes the Government mugs the taxpayer on their behalf, which is less violent but no less expensive.

Their habit, like all drug-taking, fuels the nauseating global industry which has destroyed much of Latin America, as criminal cartels fight for the mountains of British pounds and American dollars spent on drugs by Western fools. You may like this arrangement but millions, who live with its results, do not.

When someone of the standing of the Princess of Wales endorses this fashionable bilge, where can the rest of us turn?

If the Crown spurns the views of decent, responsible citizens who don't prey on their fellow creatures or blame others for their crimes, we are alone.

Why isn't there a campaign for more women on dustcarts?

If sex equality is such a universally good thing, why has there never been a campaign to have more women collecting dustbins? Wouldn't the frequent sight of female refuse collectors, strong and tough, send a powerful message about feminism to little girls and boys?

I've yet to see one, but no doubt there are a few.

Compare and contrast with the fire brigade, which like other prestige jobs including the Navy and the police, has been chosen as a key feminist battleground. In 1999, Home Secretary Jack Straw decreed that the fire service should aim to be 15 per cent female by 2009. At that time, only 1.4 per cent were female.

The 15 per cent target has yet to be reached. Just 9.3 per cent of firefighters were women in 2024.

When I investigated this back in 2002, I wrote of 'a nasty, totalitarian atmosphere in which people are afraid of speaking.

'All the firemen – and firewomen – who wrote or spoke to me begged me to keep their identity secret. Complaining publicly about the new policy is death to a career and can even lead to disciplinary action'.

So now we see the dismal case of senior Avonmouth fireman Simon Bailey.

This is one of those fiendish employment law rows which rapidly spiral off into craziness.

Mr Bailey quit the fire brigade after he was disciplined. Why? Well, for failing to tell off his subordinates for using the banned term 'fireman' to refer to, well, firemen. Among other things. No doubt there is more to it but it is all caused, in the end, by dogmatic politics.

I have always predicted that the end result of trying to get more women into the fire service will be that it ends up employing lots of weedy men, who would never have met the old blatantly sexist requirements.

My advice is to get a smoke alarm.