Last weekend’s biggest news story in the United Kingdom was also one of the country’s most frivolous in recent memory: the revelation that teenage Prince Harry has experimented with alcohol and marijuana in recent months, and apparently was a rather boisterous regular at a Wiltshire pub.
News of this experimentation brought the British press to a virtual frenzy. It garnered personal condemnatory statements from several members of Parliament and left the royal household in a state of total panic, with Prince Charles’ office offering only a brief plea to “put this incident behind us.”
Everyone from local radio commentators to the Queen had something to say about the issue, with the international media behaving only slightly less embarrassingly; they waited a few days to break the story worldwide, but responded with the same sort of hysteria.
Prince Harry smokes the chronic! Prince Harry likes an occasional pint! Prince Harry had a house party over Christmas break where teenagers acted like teenagers! And Prince Harry, obviously, is on the road to quick and vicious ruin.
But is he really? Or is this more indicative of international perceptions of marijuana and alcohol use than it is of any real danger to the young prince himself?
For what, after all, is the big deal?
He is 17 years old. He is young and wealthy and under a lot of unwelcome scrutiny. Frankly, I’d be worried if he hadn’t experimented a little. At least this way we know he’s trying to have a little fun.
And apparently, he’s not alone.
A 2001 study by the Edinburgh-based Alcohol and Research center found that British youth are statistically more likely to have tried drugs and engaged in binge drinking than their other European counterparts, with more than a third of the 15- and 16-year-olds surveyed saying they’d smoked cannabis regularly in the last year.
Worldwide, marijuana is the second most popular drug used by adolescents. Alcohol is roundly the first. Forty-one percent of American teenagers of the same age surveyed by the World Health Organization said they smoke marijuana regularly, and teenagers from the Czech Republic to Israel to India indicated that they smoke it almost as much.
So when we make such a huge example of someone like Prince Harry, are we to believe that all these young people are bound for lives of crime and disreputable habits? Are we to honestly consider this increasing worldwide trend a genuine threat and danger to the lifelong productivity of these adolescents?
Or are we merely feeding into the international idea that if we pretend cannabis smoking doesn’t exist it will eventually fade from our popular culture and lose the allure it seems to gain more of every generation?
I believe it is the latter. And I pity poor Prince Harry for having to become a poster child for reactionary drug policies and a target for malicious scrutiny that has nothing to do with the reality of today’s youth and everything to do with the personal agendas of outdated social engineers.
As for Harry, he will be subjected to drug testing back at his high school, Eton, and has had his weekend visitation curtailed. Prince Charles responded by sending Harry to a suburban rehabilitation clinic to “observe and learn,” a move that probably only exacerbated the perception of Prince Harry’s escapades as dangerous forays into delinquency. And I am sure that Prince Harry is smart enough to draw the distinction between smoking the occasional joint and shooting up heroin on a daily basis.
All in all, there really isn’t much left for the prince to learn from this episode except what the majority of the world’s teenagers already know: If you try smoking pot or drinking, it’s probably not a good idea to get caught.
Especially if you are a crown prince of England.
And you know that fair or unfair, the media will make you news hour fodder for days and days to come.
Editor’s note: This staff column is courtesy of the University of Mississippi campus newspaper, the Daily Mississippian.
(U-WIRE)