The war on drugs has been lost. They have become an integral part of British society — and not only its dregs, but also its cream: fashionable journalists, oligarchs, and young aristocrats. All we can do is tax them like tobacco and alcohol and monitor their quality. That is the purpose of the bill to legalize all drugs proposed by the unassuming Member of Parliament Peter Paget. Society has split, the Chancellor of the Exchequer anticipates enormous revenues, and Peter becomes a national hero. But while the law has not yet been passed, addicts — from the irresistible rock star Tommy Hansen to the young prostitute Jessie — must extricate themselves from the criminal web on their own. And Paget himself has no idea that the higher he soars, the more hopelessly he becomes entangled in another web — the political one. For it is not only drugs that can destroy a person.