LET'S END ALL THIS REEFER MADNESS

'Cannabis, As Any Punk Would Have Told You In The Seventies, Is In
Fact The Drug Of Choice For Quite Mellow And Gentle Souls'

At the start of Labour's last term there was a huge flurry of
libertarian talk about cannabis. Various ministers declared
themselves to have inhaled when they were young and silly. Various
other public servants suggested that maybe the biggest dangers of
hashish were first that it was pointlessly criminalising lots of
otherwise blameless citizens and second that it was needlessly
clogging up an already stressed-out criminal justice system.

As the years wore on, the issue dropped further and further down the
agenda. A Police Federation report calling for decriminalisation was
swept under the carpet, despite calls for a Royal Commission from all
sorts of disparate quarters. The special adviser on drugs, Keith
Hellawell, decided to take the "gateway drug" line, whereby smoking
cannabis sets one on the rocky road to heroin addiction by osmosis
(because of a meaningless survey of 100 people in New Zealand).

More generally, a refusal by Government to engage with the subject -
possibly connected to the revelation of the sumptuary proclivities of
then home secretary Jack Straw's son - was so successful in shutting
down the dialogue that, despite their ubiquity, their social
significance, and their huge influence on our culture's behaviour,
come the election, drugs were no longer an issue for debate.

Now, freshly post-election, the issue has magically risen again,
propelled into the spotlight by an ex-minister who had declared
herself a midnight toker the first time around, but who was too
isolated in power to make a dent in the war on drugs rhetoric, even
when she found herself the cabinet minister responsible for it.

Mo Mowlam, now out of parliament, is not alone in speaking out about
the nuttiness of our attitudes to pot, and suggesting that things
have to change. Mr Hellawell, in his newly downgraded advising role,
has now, quite rightly, reneged on his "reefer madness" position.
It's not that there aren't connections between using cannabis and
using harder drugs, it's just that they are casual rather than causal.

Someone game to try one illegal drug, is more likely to be game to
try another. Someone already involved in purchasing class B
drugs,like cannabis is more likely to come into contact with class A
drugs, such as heroin, and so on. It's rather like saying that cereal
purchasers are more likely to be ketchup purchasers, simply because
they're the guys in the supermarket.

Further, someone who has listened to drugs education programmes, but
has tried cannabis anyway, is likely to have discovered that the sky
doesn't fall in after a puff (for that you have to go to the trouble
of doing a few big hot-knives). There is then little incentive to
believe further rhetoric about the dangers of harder drugs, because
if one set of scaremongering about one drug is found to be
exaggerated, then why on earth shouldn't all the rest?

Borough Commander Brian Paddick of the Metropolitan Police, may or
may not see that all this is common sense. He is behind the south
London pilot experiment which started yesterday, whereby people found
in possession of cannabis will receive only a formal warning and the
confiscation of their stash. His logic in taking such a step is
governed primarily by what he sees happening to charges made by the
police when they get to the courts.

"It is an extremely bureaucratic and therefore expensive process to
get a conviction. As these figures show, having gone through all that
bureaucracy people are being fined between =A320 and =A350 or being
conditionally discharged," he said. Mr Paddick is interested in
freeing up his force to tackle more damaging drug use, of a kind that
can sometimes lead to criminal activity, despair, death and the full
gamut of misery and destruction that addiction can herald.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is "interested in the experiment"
for the same reasons. "This fits in entirely with the emphasis on
placing absolute priority on class A drugs," he said.

Certainly, the emphasis is not on class A drugs at the moment. While
nine-tenths of drugs charges are possession cases, 75 per cent of
these involve cannabis. Again, there are purely practical reasons for
this. A wrap of cocaine disappears in minutes at a party, while a few
Es are swallowed in the queue for the club. Crack and heroin are
often consumed with equal promptness.

But cannabis users drag their bag or their lump around with them for
days or weeks on end, a spliff here, a toke there, a joint's-worth
handed over to a friend. There's little voracious greed to keep on
using till there's none left and everyone is lit up like Blackpool,
but quite a bit more to talk expansively, have a small nap, eat some
chocolate buttons, watch Father Ted videos and, in extreme and
frightening cases, have a bit of a sing-song. Cannabis, as any punk
would have told you in the Seventies, is in fact the drug of choice
for quite mellow and gentle souls.

In Brixton, the prime location for Mr Paddick's new approach,
cannabis use is not even endemic, it's more or less compulsory. Every
newsagent has king-size papers by the till, every ash-tray has a
roach in it. It's apparently very simple to buy hash on the street,
though speaking as someone who one bought half an individually
wrapped liquorice allsort for =A310 on Atlantic Road, I've never been
too keen on that method.

It would be wrong though to dismiss all of the criticism that is made
of cannabis. For some people, dope can be a problem, causing paranoia
or depression. These people tend to notice this quite quickly and
avoid regular use of the drug. For others, the temptation to roll up
upon waking up and keep puffing all day long, proves stronger than
the need to go out and engage with the world.

Like alcohol users or car users, cannabis users are not always in
control. But since the illegal market is now so firmly established
all over the country, the law as it stands does not protect the
vulnerable minority from such pitfalls.

And while Mr Paddick may or not believe that his experiment is likely
to signal a wider sea-change in the general status of cannabis in our
society, his relaxation of the rules has already been embraced with
gusto.

A couple of days after Mr Paddick's experiment was announced, the
annual Free The Weed festival was staged in Brixton's Brockwell Park.
Larger than previous festivals, and better organised, it hosted a
large crowd stoned off their faces.

Having fully embraced the coming relaxation of the law, perhaps a
little over-eagerly, the assembled company were imbibing cannabis
openly, and as they day progressed, selling it more and more
flagrantly. In a large car park next to the park's cafe, a formidable
cluster of police vans crouched over the event. Police patrolled in
pairs, getting in more practice turning a blind eye than they'd so
far had in their lives.

According to Mr Paddick, once the dealing in crack and heroin and the
related crime is dealt with, the present policy on cannabis will be
re-adopted. Already all the signs are that this will be much, much
easier said than done.