WHAT'S THE BEEF ABOUT SELLING CANNABIS?

HERE used to be three butchers in the village of Silverton, Devon. Now
there is only one, run by Mike, who supplements his income by making pork
pies and pasties. The announcement yesterday by the Food Standards Agency
that butchers are to be subjected to even harsher licensing regulations,
costing UKP100 a year, means that Mike will have to sell another 500
pasties to break even.

I know how hard Mike works. I've watched him expertly cut up a cow and,
after two hours, I fainted. He has already been forced to sell his wooden
butcher's block, take his beef off the bone, change to metrification and go
on endless hygiene courses. But he admits that he has it easy compared to
the abattoir, which is facing closure as a result of red tape, or the
farmer next door, who earned UKP4,000 last year.

Farmers are committing suicide; abattoirs, as the Prince of Wales pointed
out this week, are being driven out of business; and consumers are being
forced to buy their meat suction-packed from supermarkets that import
shepherd's pies from Thailand.

What can we do about it? The answer may lie in our poll on the legalisation
of cannabis. Of nearly 4,000 calls received by this newspaper on the wicked
weed, 61 per cent wanted it legalised for a trial period.

Our letters page is overrun with readers advocating experimenting with
dope. The main problem, as practical Daily Telegraph readers point out, is
how to manufacture and distribute it.

To import the cannabis would be illegal, and buying from drugs barons would
defeat the point. There have been suggestions that we could have a
nationalised cannabis industry, with profits going to the NHS. But that
would be like insisting we drank only Blair's bitter or Tony's chablis. A
black market in alternative beverages would soon grow up.

Richard Branson and Anita Roddick have refused to contemplate Virgin dope
or Body Shop hemp. So who should gain from this potential UKP2 billion
market? The answer is obvious: farmers, abattoirs and butchers.

FARMERS could be given EU money to set up the infrastructure to grow
Cannabis sativa. After all, the Greeks get subsidies for growing tobacco,
and it is not a crop that takes a great deal of intensive farming, unlike
organic vegetables.

Connoisseurs would soon tell the difference between Devon dope and
Scunthorpe spliff. Abattoirs could process it. They already have to comply
with some of the toughest hygiene standards of any industry. Officials
would do spot checks to make sure the cannabis was not adulterated by dried
parsley or worse.

The 12,000 butchers in Britain would be the only ones licensed to sell
cannabis to anyone aged 18 or over. Butchers are the ideal middlemen: they
tend to be trustworthy, large types with short back-and-sides and pink
faces. And they are already used to a raft of regulations. When the local
health authority official came round, he could have the power to revoke any
butcher's licence if he thought that cannabis was being pushed to children.

It might even encourage people to eat more meat. It is unlikely that the
butcher would ask old Agnes: "Would you like a joint with your joint of
lamb?", but 18-year-olds might be tempted to buy a few sausages for
late-night munchies after a spliff.

The 25 per cent of young people who already admit to using dope would no
longer have to come into contact with pushers, who will at best rip them
off and at worst drag them into a dangerous underworld. The price of a
spliff would probably be no more than a pork chop, so there would be no
need to steal a car radio to pay for it. And cannabis would seem less
exotic to children if they saw it being sold between the brisket and the
offal. Only vegetarian smokers might complain: they'd have to hold their noses.

The NFU should take up the idea. I would rather we helped farmers, butchers
and abattoirs than organised crime, the Government or large tobacco
manufacturers. I'd always choose a glass of champagne or whisky over
cannabis, but I would take a toke if it saved British beef.