According to a story on the BBC and in this morning’s Metro, a man – a father of three – with no prior criminal record has been jailed after remonstrating with a drug dealer who had sold drugs to a member of his family, and for flushing the dealer’s stash down the toilet. The altercation between the dealer and the furious father was reported to the police by one of the dealer’s customers, upset I imagine, that the smack-stash had been flushed.
I can imagine few more extreme provocations for a law-abiding family man than some lowlife supplying heroin to one’s family. I cannot see what good can possibly come of jailing Peter Drummond and blighting him with a criminal record, particularly since no acts of violence are alleged, and Mr Drummond accepts that he may have acted rashly in confronting the criminal himself instead of contacting the police.
I would think that dealing with the irate family members of addicts would be one of the occupational hazards of drug dealing, and I can’t understand why the courts can’t accept that communities ought to be outraged and provoked when the very fabric of community life and family life is threatened by these parasitic scum.
But I fear, indeed despair, that mine is a minority view.
