A Sense Of Loss

Gripped hard by Andrew Marr's A History Of Modern Britain. So much I'd forgotten, now remembered. And so many of the writer's judgements seem to me spot on.

The last two sentences of a section on drug use in the sixties are just so utterly right in their bleak compassion that I just have to quote them: Nobody became wiser or more interesting through using heroin, LSD or dope, and the battle against drug use has been entirely lost. The victims began with a steady stream of performers and hangers-on who died from overdoses or drugs-related accidents and, more important by far, are the hundreds of thousands of poorer, less talented children, who followed them after having far less fun. 

It's the reference to children that nails it.