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Lily Allen has never been backwards at coming forwards. A certain amount of it is definitely for show, with her sometimes controversial comments clearly getting her press coverage she otherwise wouldn’t get. But most of it is what she actually believes, and actually has a ring of truth about it.
Allen has recently invoked controversy and a certain amount of vitriol aimed in her direction due to comments she recently made concerning drugs and people who use drugs.
In an interview with The Word magazine, she said:
“The only [newspaper] story is that drugs are bad and they will kill you – I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work every day, no problem. But we never hear that side of the story.”
Now personally I don’t find that comment very offensive. She isn’t defending drug use, or promoting it in any way, but merely pointing out that there’s another side to the story than the one blithely reported by the national newspapers.
But as The NME reports, that didn’t stop groups such as the National Drugs Prevention Alliance and Addaction getting on her case and arguing that the comments are unhelpful and misguided.
I’m sure both of these groups do a wonderful job, but surely Allen is allowed to talk from personal experience. Isn’t that the very essence of the free speech system we’re supposed to adhere to in the West?
In the face of such widespread criticism, Allen has now followed up her comments in a video interview on the matter. The NME has the video in full, of which the abridged highlights are Lily stating:
“It’s such a big thing, drugs, such a taboo subject. Maybe it is just me and the environment I’ve grown up in, but literally everyone I know is on drugs, or has been.”
“I haven’t got a right to tell people to ease up on their views on it, or that taking drugs is a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not well-educated enough on the subject, but I can observe what I see, and that’s what I’ve done.”
Hear hear, say what you see. Isn’t that what Roy Walker from Catchphrase always told us? I don’t condone drug use at all, and don’t do them myself. But people have the right to choose and not everyone is a victim.
Sure, Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty show the negative sides of continued hard drugs use but those two aren’t exactly typical. Lily Allen should not be dissuaded from expressing an opinion based on what she sees happening. Otherwise we may as well have let Hitler win The Second World War after all.
[Photo Source: From Newscom with permission]
