Just before Christmas, the Government published two media releases on the subject of crime and sentencing. The first concerned making several ‘legal highs’ illegal; the second announced a review of the maximum sentences for dangerous driving.

What grabbed my attention was the current similarity of sentences for very different crimes. Currently the maximum sentence for dangerous driving is just two years – the same as for possession of amphetamines and less than half the maximum sentence for possession of cannabis or the previously legal high known as ‘spice’. So in the government’s mind, having a small spliff in your pocket is more than twice as bad as putting a child in a wheelchair by knowingly driving a car with defective brakes or by driving on the wrong side of the road at speed.

But what if you kill someone by dangerous driving? Then the maximum penalty which can be imposed by the Crown Court is 14 years – exactly the same as that for possession of prescription painkillers or tranquilisers if is believed that you have ‘intent to supply’. A student who buys half a dozen Ecstasy tablets to share with friends at a party can be given a life sentence, whilst a drunken driver who drives badly and kills a pedestrian faces a maximum of just 10 years in prison.

There can be few better examples than this of a government desperate to please as many Daily Mail-reading residents of middle England as possible. Tough on drugs, yet gentle on the motorist. The real issue is that highlighted by Professor David Nutt that many MPs (and presumably their constituents) believe that you cannot compare harms resulting from a legal activity with those from an illegal one.

So let’s get personal. Ask your MP who he thinks should get the longer sentence: his 19 year old son who buys a couple of Ecstasy to share with flatmates at a student party or the man who drives on the wrong side of the road whilst drunk and kills the MP’s 16 year old daughter, who is walking home from a friend’s house? A pity it’s taken the Labour government 12 years to realise that the latter sentence is too low. And a shame that it still hasn’t realised that the sentences for the former have done very little, except to maintain a deceit that ‘something is being done’ about drugs.