In life, there are only a few things that are inevitable – birth, death and taxes are the main three. But there’s one other thing which is almost universal to the human experience – and that’s namely the ability of politicians to identify a “problem”, only to respond with something that doesn’t actually fix the issue.

The main reason politicians typically do this, at least in the humble opinion of Ears To The House, is to distract from something else. Take, for example, Britain – a country which has its junior NHS doctors going on strike, protesters glueing themselves to roads in the name of saving polar bears, and prisoners apparently able to escape jails by hanging onto the undersides of lorries with bed sheets.

In other words, things aren’t going very well for the ruling Tory administration – so how have they responded? By identifying laughing gas – more formally known as nitrous oxide – as a suddenly pressing problem and declaring it to be a Class C drug. According to The Sentencing Council, this is what it essentially means…

If you’re caught possessing laughing gas, you potentially face two years in prison – or up to 14 years if you’re supplying, producing, or importing it. The British government had better hope none of the drug dealers in question were watching how Daniel Khalife escaped from the supposedly secure Wandsworth Prison recently.

Nonetheless, the government’s decision to criminalise laughing gas goes directly against the government’s own advice. Two years ago, they asked their own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to report on the subject – they counselled against criminalisation on the grounds it would be disproportionate to the problems it causes, and would also cause issues for those using nitrous oxide legally.

They don’t even listen to their own advisers when friendly headlines from supportive tabloid newspapers are up for grabs…