WEED CHEAPER THAN ALE AND ALMOST LEGAL

South London OKs marijuana smoking.

There was no mistaking the aroma wafting over the market stalls
Monday in the south London community of Brixton. It was the odor of
marijuana, accompanied by the heady whiff of freedom.

This teeming, underprivileged corner of London, notorious as a haven
for drugs and crime, has been chosen to pilot a small but significant
experiment that could open the door to the decriminalization of
marijuana in Britain. Starting Monday, and for the next six months,
no one in the Brixton area caught in possession of the drug will be
prosecuted, local police have announced.

"Man it's great," said Roger, 19, who refused to give his full name,
as he exhaled a stream of smoke over the heads of local shoppers. "I
heard it on the radio this morning, that now you can smoke where you
like and the police can't do [anything] about it. It means we can
relax, we don't have to hide indoors."

The new policy is not quite that relaxed. Those found in possession
of small amounts will have their drugs confiscated and be issued a
warning. But there will be no criminal record and police no longer
will stop and search suspects, effectively making Brixton the first
place in Britain where people can use marijuana without fear of being
prosecuted.

For many residents, that will make little difference. Drug dealers
already loiter openly among the stalls selling dried fish, plantain
and reggae music to the largely Caribbean local population. Drug
users travel to Brixton from all over London to stock up on supplies.
"Brixton has always had the Bohemian reputation anyway," said Barry
Klieff, a real estate broker optimistic about the implications for
housing prices in the area. "If anything, this will give it a star
appeal. It's only cannabis, loads of people smoke it all over London,
and most of them are middle class people."

For Britain, the implications of what is happening in Brixton could
be far more profound.

The initiative was launched by police with little fanfare and barely
any comment from the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who
campaigned on a platform of "zero tolerance" toward drugs when first
elected in 1997. Since then, he has fallen silent on the issue and
police are willing to become more lax. The government insists there
are no plans to decriminalize marijuana. The Brixton experiment has
been dismissed simply as a local initiative in an area battling to
contain a far bigger problem with crack cocaine and heroin. But it
has been tacitly endorsed by Home Secretary David Blunkett and
approved by Scotland Yard, Britain's highest police authority.

Policy Draws Criticism, Praise

Critics have accused the government of seeking to legalize marijuana
by stealth, avoiding the public controversy that would accompany the
introduction of legislation in parliament. Supporters have hailed it
as a pragmatic step that will aid race relations, save public money
and free police resources to battle the soaring use of hard drugs in
Britain.

But all agree on the significance of the move. At a time when polls
indicate public opinion tilting in favor of legalization, and amid
evidence that police are more permissive of marijuana use, the
Brixton experiment brings closer the possibility that marijuana use
will cease to be illegal, even if it is not formally legalized.

"It's amazing. I was absolutely stunned when I heard the news. It
came almost out of the blue," said Paula Woodward of Drugscope, an
independent research agency. "People are going to be watching Brixton
pretty closely to see what happens in the next six months. If it
works, it could happen all over the country fairly soon."

If it does work, Britain would rank behind the Netherlands, which has
not only decriminalized marijuana but permits its sale in special
cafes, and alongside Spain, which has adopted a "blind eye" approach
similar to that being piloted in Brixton, as one of the most liberal
countries toward drugs in the industrialized world.

Statistics released by the independent Drug Monitoring Agency show
that seizures of cannabis have fallen by more than half in the past
three years, as customs officials divert their attention to the
growing trade in harder drugs. Street prices have plummeted as
marijuana floods the market: a marijuana joint now costs the
equivalent of $1.40, far less than a pint of beer, Britain's favorite
recreational drug, the agency said.

A European Union study last year found that Britain had the highest
rate of marijuana use in Europe.

Though possession of marijuana carries a penalty of up to five years
imprisonment, the law has never been as tightly enforced in Britain
as in the U.S. According to police statistics, it can cost up to
$14,000 in public money to push a possession case through the courts,
where magistrates routinely fine offenders as little as $14. Three
quarters of all drug prosecutions are for possession of marijuana,
yet the rate of prosecutions for those caught is as low as 22 percent
in some areas.

Official Blessing On Rise

"This is something that has been known but unsaid for a long time,"
said Woodward. "What makes what's happening significant is that this
is the first time it has actually been admitted and sanctioned by
officials."

Official sanction appears to be growing. The Police Foundation, a
research group, recommended in a major study on drug policy last fall
that marijuana should be downgraded to a Class C drug, which carries
no criminal penalty, in order to allow police to focus their energies
on tackling Class A drugs.

In a weekend newspaper column, Blair's former drug policy chief, Mo
Mowlam, said she believes it is time to legalize marijuana. In an
editorial Monday, the Evening Standard, London's largest newspaper,
endorsed the Brixton policy.

Some Brixton residents are not happy that their neighborhood has been
singled out. They fear the area could become a magnet for "drug
tourists" who will further encourage dealers to operate there.

"It will bring all sorts of bad people here to cause all sorts of
trouble," said Patricia Bubb, 47, who works at a salon beside the
neighborhood's most infamous street corner. "We already have enough
trouble here."

For others, the issues run deeper than drugs. Brendan Wright, 53, who
came to Brixton in the 1950s from Jamaica, also heard about the new
policy on the radio and was despondent. "I heard the police have lost
the battle against drugs," he said. "They've been defeated.

"For our community, drugs is not the thing, education is the thing,"
he said. "How many of our black people are doctors, how many are
lawyers? Yet the first thing our children want to do is stand on that
street corner and buy those drugs, and now you want to tell them it's
OK, it's not illegal. This is a terrible thing."