Thursday, February 19, 2015
By Kathy Gyngell for The Daily Mail
Published: 15:52 GMT, 13 July 2012 | Updated: 08:46 GMT, 14 July 2012
Tragic: Philanthropist Eva Rausing was found dead in her London home earlier this week Eva Rausing got hooked on drugs when she was a teenager. She dropped out of university because of her drug habit. Money was her doom. She had the chance of rehab whenever she wanted it – a chance that only 2 per cent of drug addicts in this country get (despite the billions that government still ploughs into methadone treatment). The money was always there to finance her destructive habit - indefinitely.
Worse, there was, apparently, no one or no situation that checked her behaviour. It went sanctioned. There was no criminal challenge. No wake up call.
Whether she died of a suspected drug overdose or of heart failure hardly matters. It is reasonable to say that drugs and her drug lifestyle – a lifestyle that invites every other risk - was more than a contributory factor.
She and her husband Hans ostensibly came to London to avoid high Swedish Taxes. But in London they were also able pursue a drug addled hedonistic lifestyle that simply would not have been tolerated in Sweden.
This lifestyle and notoriety had not stopped her, by the time of her death, from being a co-patron with Kate Middleton of the drug charity, Action on Addiction. It had not stopped her from being a trustee of one of Prince Charles’s charities. She was hardly fit for either task. But neither charity, apparently, had asked her to step down.
It is impossible to believe that since she was caught three years ago taking crack cocaine into the US Embassy that no one suspected what has been going on since, not least given her Face Book cries for help and her haggard appearance. Her routine bag search then revealed 2.5 grams of heroin and 10 grams of crack cocaine in her purse.
The police were called by the Embassy. A further search of the couple’s SW1 home turned up thousands of dollars’ worth of pure cocaine as well as more crack and heroin.
Though the drugs the Rausings had on them would have earned a street dealer a decent spell of time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, all charges against these billionaires were suddenly dropped. This came after a “protracted correspondence” between their lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Instead they were issued with a conditional caution.
The decision, rightly, was slammed by Sir Ian Blair, then head of London’s police force. He was “very surprised” that they escaped prosecution, but remained ridiculously powerless. He said the decision sent out the wrong message about drug use.
Public: Eva's addiction became public when she attempted to smuggle heroine into the US Embassy and was subsequently cautioned He said: 'I do find that result extremely surprising and it reminds me of the 19th century legal comment often attributed to Sir James Mathew, "in England justice is open to all - just like the Ritz".'
It certainly shouted one law for the rich and one for the poor as I remember blogging on the Centre for Policy Studies website at the time – to the fury of the pro drug lobby.
Despite the public outrage, Prince Charles was quick to give his public support to Eva Rausing. His spurious defence was that his charities gave a second chance to young drug addicts. So why not therefore to Mrs. Rausing? That she already had had endless chances and that they had hardly proved to be the solution to her problem seemed to escape him.
So were no questions asked in the critical years that followed and if not why not?
Like John Paul Getty Junior before them, the simple truth is that in libertarian London no one challenged their drug consumption.
Whether simply lazy or well intentioned, such misplaced kindness represents the worst and the most perverse of contemporary liberal thinking.
And it is not just Prince Charles who is guilty of it. The great and good in Britain have encouraged such toleration of drugs, from the misguided Archbishop of Canterbury downwards. Not only has he supported more toleration but is quoted on the back of the Transform Policy Foundation’s “Blueprint" for legalisation. Transform is a lobby funded in part by The Open Society, itself funded by George Soros, that campaigns single mindedly for the legalisation and normalisation of all drugs.
The Times and now even the Telegraph have joined with the Independent and Guardian in giving over column inches to ‘open minded’ but misguided libertarians. These writers would have us believe that the normalisation and legalisation of drugs is a solution to the ghastly addiction that the Rausings fell into without check. It is not.
Slipped through: When Eva was cautioned action should have been taken as those were the critical years when we should have questioned her, and her husband's, drug use If their plight proved anything it is that the law did not touch them and that legalisation would and could never protect them from the harsh and sordid reality that drug users and addicts fall into.
Wealth did not save the Rausings from living in the squalor we now learn of inside their multi million mansion. For addicts always want more and in their addiction they destroy everything of real value – nothing more so than trust and relationships.
Far from detracting from their lifestyle, drugs’ de facto legality plus their affordability and availability aided it. It added years to their denial, their deceit and to their loss of moral compass and sense of responsibility, all that make up the condition of addiction.
It staved off the crises that have brought other addicts to their senses sooner. Prison, as it has been with so many others, might have been the making of them.
It was not rehab that failed Eva Rausing. Thousands of others have benefited from it – many of whom got there by route of prison or arrest. These are people who today are running banks, businesses or are actively putting back through counselling , mentoring and helping others break their cycle of addiction.
Loss: Eva and Hans Kristian Rausing were not saved by rehab and were destroyed by our toleration Recovered addicts have their antennae tuned for denial a mile off. They are the toughest of task masters. They demand honesty in relationships and warn against the disastrous type of ‘co-dependency’ of the Rausings mutually destructive relationship.
The thousands of addicts who understand this have not only gone through rehab but continue to attend their regular AA, NA or CA meetings to keep their lives on track. They keep in touch with peers who also ‘live the programme’. As they say, it works.
Unfortunately the Rausings did not get to live the programme. They were not so lucky.
John Paul Getty was. He fortunately recovered and grew to love the UK. But Rausings pulled the short straw and were destroyed by our toleration.
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