BRITISH PUB A BASTION OF POT SMOKERS' RIGHTS

Owner Of 'Cannabis Cafe' Directs Profits From Recreational Users To Help
Buy Marijuana For Medicinal Users.

STOCKPORT, England -- Until the Dutch Experience cafe opened here earlier
this fall, providing marijuana by the bag instead of beer by the pint,
Stockport never loomed particularly large in the greater British imagination.

"I read in the newspaper that the only thing Stockport is famous for is the
hat museum," said Darren Ince, 32, a retail manager, on his way to secure a
joint at the cafe recently. "I didn't know we were even famous for that."

All that changed this fall, when the cafe opened its doors, let the
distinctive smoke waft out and instantly turned this unremarkable suburb of
Manchester into a battleground for Britain's growing pot- smokers' rights
movement.

The Dutch Experience, modeled on the pot-purveying coffee shops of
Amsterdam, may well prove to be the thin end of the wedge in Britain, where
the government is signaling that it might relax laws on the use of "soft"
drugs in the name of creating a workable drug policy.

British drug laws are strict, and police spend an inordinate amount of time
dealing with minor drug offenses, the government says. Sixty-five percent
of the 120,000 drug-related arrests in Britain last year were for
possession of marijuana.

Saying that police should direct their efforts at eradicating "hard" drugs
like heroin and LSD, Home Secretary David Blunkett last month proposed
downgrading marijuana to a Class C drug from its current Class B status.
That would make possession of pot no longer an arrestable offense.

A pilot project in Brixton, a drug-infested neighborhood in south London
where police spent six months focusing on hard drugs instead of marijuana,
has proved effective, the police say.

But Blunkett's proposals have not yet taken effect, and law- enforcement
officials across the country are not exactly sure what to do in this
interim period.

It is unclear, for instance, what the Stockport police really think of the
Dutch Experience. After raiding it in September on the day it opened, they
seemed to have adopted a live-and-let-smoke policy, acknowledging, they
said in a statement, that there is an "ongoing debate about the medical
benefits, or otherwise, of cannabis."

But it appears the cafe has been attracting too much attention and too
boldly flouting the law.

On Tuesday, as the BBC was inside filming the cafe for a program about drug
policy, police arrived, threw everyone out and charged the owner, Colin
Davies, and several others with offenses including selling marijuana.

"The police in appropriate cases exercise discretion and judgment with
regard to certain offenses of simple possession of cannabis, and each case
is taken on merit," said Superintendent Richard Crawshaw of the Greater
Manchester Police Stockport division.

"However, in the face of overt and challenging behavior which amounts to
intention to break the law, our stance will be one of enforcement."

It is hard to know how far such enforcement goes. Even as Davies, one of
Britain's best-known campaigners for legalizing marijuana, remained in
custody overnight, his cafe reopened. The patrons came back, sipping
coffee, rolling joints, discussing nothing and everything.

The cafe has proved highly popular with its neighbors. They applaud its
strict no- alcohol, no-violence policy, saying they much prefer happy,
peaceful druggies to aggressive drunks.

"They always look so pleased, and they're really friendly," said Becky
Lees, who works at the front desk of the Outline health club, just across
the walkway, speaking of the pot smokers at the Dutch Experience.

She does not smoke, she said, but welcomes customers who come in from the
Dutch Experience, which sells little in the way of food to vanquish the
sudden appetites of its often ravenous clientele.

"We get a lot of business out of it, because they get the munchies and come
and eat in our cafe," Lees said.

Davies, who uses the profits from recreational patrons at the Dutch
Experience to help pay for pot for medicinal users, says he started smoking
marijuana to quell crippling back pains from the vertebrae he broke after a
fall in 1995.

Shortly afterward, he founded the Medical Marijuana Cooperative, a
mail-order service that discreetly provides pot to people with a variety of
illnesses, from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Davies, 44, jokingly calls
the cafe the MHS, or the Marijuana Health Service. The National Health
Service, or NHS, runs Britain's system of socialized medicine.

It is not uncommon to see wheelchair users rolling down the path in front
of the cafe, seeking drugs inside.

"People in wheelchairs shouldn't have to pay for their medicine," said
Davies, who hopes to open a chain of cannabis cafes around Britain. "They
should get it free, and that's what we're doing."

Mark Chadwick, 39, who hurt his arm in a motorcycle accident, does not care
if he can get it free or not, as long as he can get it. For the last month
or so he has been paying 10 pounds (about $14) or so per bag of pot, enough
to roll a half-dozen joints that help keep him off his prescribed
painkillers and make it easier to sleep at night.

Chadwick loves the smoky, sleepy atmosphere inside the cafe, with its green
tables imported from Amsterdam and its air of festively illicit camaraderie.

"It's nothing like going to a pub," he said. "It's like going to the
theater instead of going to a movie. In a pub you spend all your time
worrying about who's looking at you, who's going to throw a bottle at you."

At the cannabis cafe, no one throws anything. Because no hard drugs are
allowed, there are no dealers trying to introduce patrons to the
attractions of drugs like heroin and cocaine.

"If I couldn't buy here, I would have to go to a dealer, which is something
I don't want to do," Chadwick said.