LOOSENING DRUG LAWS GETS MIXED REVIEWS

Some applaud the results of experiment in South London, but others are
disturbed by drug use out in the open.

LONDON -- At the rundown Stockwell housing project here, the potheads were
complaining about the smackheads.

"Right down there, I saw a guy injecting a girl into her neck," said James
Haind, 28, his indignation wrapped in a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke.
Hanging out recently at the project's skateboard park with his friends,
their skateboards and their stashes of weed, he offered himself as living
proof that marijuana does not lead inevitably to harder drugs.

"A sensible, stable person will not turn to heroin," declared Haind, an
out-of-work sign painter who estimates that he has been getting high for
half his life. "That's for the more stupid people."

That is just the message the government seems to have sent to Brixton, in
South London, where a six-month experiment in loosening drug laws has just
ended.

The program pleased Brixton's smokers, and even the police. But it left
many residents feeling that their neighborhood had turned into an open-air
drug bazaar, where teenagers smoke on the street and dealers set up shop in
the market, hissing "skunk weed, skunk weed" at pedestrians.

"People started smoking openly, whereas before they'd have their little
hideaways," said the Rev. Chris Andre-Watson, pastor of the Brixton Baptist
Church, who runs a mentoring program for teenage boys and says the drug
experiment has left many youths "zombied out."

Partly as a result of Brixton's trial, the government announced plans to
downgrade the criminal penalties for smoking pot in a country where an
estimated 5 million people are habitual users.

Although the plan is an acknowledgment that drugs like heroin and cocaine
are far more harmful than marijuana, the mixed reviews here raise a host of
questions about loosening marijuana laws.

Under the experiment, people caught smoking marijuana in Lambeth Borough,
which includes Brixton, got off with warnings rather than arrests, leaving
the police free to pursue more serious criminals. The police said it led to
an overall decline in crime and saved much police time.

Haind and his smoking companions were thrilled. "For me and my friends,
it's all good - we don't have to worry about getting hassled if we want to
smoke a little herb," said David Reading, 21, a would-be record producer
just out of college.

But others were angry at the way pot-selling and smoking had been thrust so
clearly in the open.

Ros Griffiths, director of the Employment Cafe, a job center and Internet
coffee shop, said she was unsure what had offended her most: when a dealer
grabbed a loudspeaker at the weekly farmer's market and yelled, "Come and
get your weed here!" - or when a teenager sauntered through her door and
sought advice on setting up a cannabis cafe.

"By the time I finished with him, he was suddenly put off the idea," she
recalled grimly.

Andre-Watson and other residents complained so bitterly about drug dealing
that after negative newspaper stories, the police finally sent officers
this month to clear the streets.

But how long the stepped-up presence will persist is anybody's guess. When
London as a whole relaxes its marijuana policy under the new legislation,
people in Brixton are predicting that the open-air dealers will be back.

Indeed, until last week, there were dozens of opportunities to buy pot on a
Brixton street crowded with families and stores. Few people were under the
illusion that marijuana was the sole product being offered.

"It's not like people stand on one side of the street dealing cannabis, and
on the other side they're dealing crack and cocaine," Griffiths said. "It's
the same person."

Trying to address that problem, the new drug law, whose passage by the
Labor-controlled Parliament is a sure thing in the next legislative
session, provides for increased penalties for pushing drugs, particularly
hard drugs.