WHEN BEANS MEANS HIGHS

(Read Brian Sewell's column every Tuesday, and on art every Friday in the
Evening Standard)

Drugs damage minds, break up families, perpetuate a despairing underclass
and subvert human dignity -- so said the Daily Mail when the Police
Federation report on drugs was published last month.

The Times said much the same, but with admirable brevity -- "Drugs ruin
lives" was the editor's conclusion. And so they do, say I, victim of one of
them, knowing that were it subject to the same prohibitions as those
marketed by drug barons, it would ruin mine.

I took to it in my early teens and almost at once became dependent on it.
Two years of National Service cut short the addiction, the pain of
deprivation hardly noticed when basic army training inflicted so many other
pains, but as a student I willingly returned to my enslavement and have
ever since been subjugated by it.

I need to feel this drug coursing through my veins, responding with
exultation to the renewal of my physical and intellectual energy. In the
early morning I cannot begin to function without a shot of it, and
throughout the day the drip-feed of controlled doses maintains its high
level of activity.

Occasionally I take an overdose, an accidental excess of it, the
consequences a racing pulse, nausea, trembling hands, headaches, depression
and the jitters, and to these the only effective response is withdrawal.
But the symptoms caused by deprivation are much the same as those of
excess, and I am left weak and drained, an empty husk until I take another
dose of it - and then the rush of exhilaration, as once again I feel alive,
makes the cycle of excess and denial utterly inevitable.

My cardiologist insists that I must break my habit. I fret about
palpitations and he tells me that I know the cure; I complain that my heart
feels like the single-cylinder diesel engine of a Turkish fishing boat, my
Pacemaker like the turbo of an early Saab, and his dour response is that I
know the remedy; I grumble that nausea overwhelms me, that I feel faint,
that sleep is wakeful, that my bladder has the capacity of a tennis ball,
and he shakes his head in bored despair. "It is killing you," he says,
"give it up."

I cannot. I have tried, time and again, but I cannot free myself from an
addiction that has as firm a hold on me as heroin, cocaine or crack. My
drug is not recreational, not taken to heighten the pleasure of the dance,
not a popper to extend the sexual experience, not E or LSD, not a narcotic
nor a sedative. It is not sold at the school gates by seedy whites in
grubby anoraks, nor by dapper blacks in BMWs; it is not in the gift of
adolescent friends at raves and concerts; it is available in every
supermarket, every high street, every village shop. It is caffeine.

I do not care whether it is ground from the five-year-old bean of far
Sumatra, subtle and pale from such long loitering, or from the dark roast
of Mocha; I do not care whether it is in granules, Mr Nestle's blended with
gold dust and the pubic clippings of Norwegian blondes, or Lord Sainsbury's
very own and unadorned; I do not care if it is an espresso as black as a
Nubian scrotum or the breakfast cafe latte to be had on Como's shores.

I care only that my coffee has not been decaffeinated and gives me the
required kick. If it does not, then out comes the snuff box, not for a
snort, but for the boost of Nescafe. My friends have seen me scatter it on
a cappuccino, thicken an espresso, darken a cafe filtre, add it to a glass
of Coca-Cola and spoon the dramatically rising froth; they have seen me, in
extremis, place it on my tongue and let saliva do the work; those who have
trekked and climbed with me have seen it mixed with muesli, yoghurt, honey
and snow.

I am an addict. The Chancellor could punitively tax it, as he does tobacco,
and I would pay the price, or smuggle it tucked in my underpants, or buy it
from menacing dealers on the corners of Old Compton Street. Tony Blair
could preach another sermon and appoint another Tsar, but I'd not care a
damn and ask my friends from foreign parts to play bootlegger with it. The
Archbishop of Canterbury could declare it sinful, quoting the authority of
Paul and Habakkuk, but I'd raise my middle finger to him yet again. I am an
addict and I will not, cannot, do without my coffee.

As an addict, I have some sympathy with those addicted to far stronger
stuff. I have friends who cannot function without alcohol and nicotine,
whose dependence must be satisfied with the first waking breath of day, and
who, to pay the price decided on in Downing Street, cut back on other
things. I have a friend with multiple sclerosis for whom, as Beta
Interferon is denied him (too far gone, they say), illegal cannabis affords
relief and he quite rightly buys it, but at crippling expense.

I have talked to young men and women addicted to cocaine and heroin who
sustain their habits by prostitution, shoplifting and theft from cars, of
which the insurance, police and prison costs must be incalculably large.
The Police Federation report estimates that the illegal international trade
in drugs in worth not less than UKP1,000 billion a year and possibly three
times that figure. In Britain, annually, some 100,000 arrests are made for
possession of cannabis, ecstasy and LSD - think of the cost of that in
police time. Some 500,000 use ecstasy every weekend and get away with it.

There is now widespread belief that the Government's repressive policies
cannot work and that we should at least be more permissive with
recreational drugs. Let me suggest a more radical response. Let us take the
profit out of illegal drugs by making them all legal. Let the addict walk
into any pharmacy and pick up a clean needle and a measured dose of heroin
or crack for much the same as it costs to buy a ticket on a London bus.
With no law broken, there will be no consequent adrenal thrill, no one to
whom to sell drugs for a profit, no point in stealing a car radio, no point
in shoplifting or prostitution, and cannabis can grow on the kitchen
window-sill. No addict need die of a contaminated dose nor contract HIV
from an infected needle; no MS sufferer will feel compelled to affect
innocence in his wheelchair when he spies Policeman Plod.

With such freedom from drug barons and prosecution, there may well be fewer
addicts and certainly fewer accidental deaths, and it is probable that with
a government and all authority seeming utterly indifferent to our shooting,
snorting and guzzling drugs, our experimental appetite for them would fade,
and only a small band of inadequates (like the poor, always with us) would
continue on their way, as irredeemable as smokers, boozers, wine-bibbers
and coffee-drinkers -- which means almost every adult in the British Isles.
We are all addicted to something -- some of us to the power-piety of
imposing abstention on others.