TALKING POT IN HIGH PLACES

MARIJUANA MAYHEM: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Opposition
Tories are making noises about cracking down on cannabis. The British public
is not amused.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has a drug problem.

Oh, not of an abusive nature. In fact, Blair may never have smoked a single
joint of marijuana or hash in his life - which may, in fact, be the source
of his troubles.

This month, his government's uncompromising hard line against cannabis use
has come under fire, and many of Blair's critics are once again suggesting
the prime minister is out of touch with how most people live and think.

Despite recommendations to decriminalize soft drug use from a
government-appointed, blue-panel commission, Blair and his ministers have
continued to insist cannabis use is harmful and should not be tolerated at
all. "The government has a firm and consistent view about the harm that
drugs do and is opposed to any lessening of controls on currently illicit
drugs," Lord Bassam, a Labour minister, said this week.

Bassam then cited anecdotal evidence of a young man he knew whose pot
consumption had "turned him into a schizophrenic who suffered psychotic
tendencies and hallucinations." There is "good scientific evidence" of
marijuana harm, the minister insisted.

And that costs money, he said, noting an estimated 1.2 million Britons --one
in 50 -- would have smoked dope in the last month, thereby imposing high
costs on the public health system.

By comparison two-thirds of the British adult population are drinkers. Many
observers argue liquor is the country's true health and social scourge.

The latest row began as a political problem for the Opposition Tory party.
The fuss began at the Tories' annual conference in Bournemouth, where
members arrived on a high of their strongest poll numbers since the early
1990s.

Hoping to demonstrate their readiness to govern, the Tories thrust Ann
Widdecombe, their critic on justice issues, into the spotlight. Widdecombe
is a political loner and hardliner on social issues, whose moralizeing tone
has given her the nickname the Virgin Queen. And she lived up to billing,
announcing a "zero-tolerance" jihad on drug use that included empowering
police to levy on-the-spot fines of $225 for simple marijuana possession.

With the Tories on their feet cheering the message, party leader William
Hague joined her on stage to pop open a bottle of champagne to toast her
53rd birthday, the irony apparently invisible to Tory advisers.

But it was quickly clear Widdecombe's policy was in trouble. The party's
youth wing rejected it. Police chiefs pronounced it unworkable.

And there was soon a parade of her frontbench colleagues confessing to the
inevitable question from the media that, yes, in their youth, they had
sampled grass or hash. Most mumbled it was just part of adolescent days or
university nights, tokes taken in passing to be polite.

Finally, Tim Yeo, one of eight Tory cabinet critics to acknowledge having
tried pot, admitted he enjoyed it. Cannabis, he told reporters who asked,
"was a much pleasanter experience than having too much to drink."

Even conservative newspapers sympathetic to the Tories denounced the
zero-tolerance stance as untenable. As the list of Tories confessing to
"experimentation" grew, Hague declared the issue needed "further
consultation, discussion and debate."

But Britain has just concluded a three year, government-sponsored inquiry
into drugs and the law. Headed by Ruth Runciman, the report issued last
March called for Britain to adopt the Dutch approach to marijuana
possession: making cannabis kept for personal use a non-criminal
misdemeanour.

Blair quickly rejected that suggestion. Appearing soft on crime had been a
traditional weakness of the Labour party, one that Blair exorcised as soon
as he took the helm. Unwilling to lose its law-and-order credentials, the
government indicated decriminalization was not in the cards. By promising a
response to Runciman this fall, they thought they had safely kicked the
issue into the tall grass.

Now, drug policy has come back to bite them. If drug use is to remain a
criminal offence under Labour, many observers began to ask, who then among
the current cabinet may have broken the law at one time or another?

For now, the government is refusing to play the confessional game. Deputy
Prime Minsiter John Prescott, for example, said he would tell reporters as
soon as their editors answered the question.

But it was more than a dodge. Prescott added he believed soft drug use does
lead to abuse of harder drugs. Jack Straw, the minister responsible for
drug laws, said smoking cannabis was "two to four times" as harmful as
smoking cigarettes, and said he would not decriminalize simple possession.

Meanwhile, Straw continues to try to prosecute people who use marijuana for
medical means - without much success in getting convictions. In yet another
acquittal last month, a jury freed a weeping Lezley Gibson on possession
charges. The 36-year-old mother has suffered from multiple sclerosis for 15
years and smokes marijuana for pain relief.

All this has led the British to take another look at their 30-year-old
statutes and ask whether they are still credible. Most polls show a
majority of Britons do not want soft drug use to remain a criminal offence,
a view that cuts across the political spectrum.

The public perception that Blair is out of touch with the people got worse
last week when he gave a convoluted answer to the Sunday Times about how he
would react to his own children's drug use. "I really would prefer my
children to have nothing to do with drugs at all and I think most - maybe I
don't know, I am wrong in this and other parents feel differently - but that
is how I feel."

The issue is sensitive for the prime minister since his 15-year-old son,
Euan, was arrested this summer for public drunkenness.

Blair wasn't divulging his own pot past last week but previously he has
denied ever taking so much as a puff. The claim once strained credulity.
Blair attended university in the 1970s where he played in a rock band - both
environments almost synonymous with pot smoking.

But now there are laughs and whispers he may have been telling the truth. If
so, the badge of abstinence would once again leave him oddly out of step
with a generation that so freely sampled its charms.