OPED: SNOBBERY WILL STIFLE DEBATE ON CANNABIS

Jack Straw has said - at last - that he's willing to have a reasonable
debate about the use of cannabis. But he won't. The debate will be
based on the assumption that cannabis is a dangerous and illegal drug,
used only by sad old hippies and the disillusioned young.

So let's get this straight; the argument about whether cannabis in any
of its forms should be legalised isn't really about whether the stuff
is bad for you, or about whether it leads the weak-willed to take
heroin or cocaine, or even about whether the dope-crazed are more or
less likely to go out and run down children as, whacked out by the
weed, they forget how to drive straight.

No, it's about the rather oldfashioned and almost forgotten social
phenomenon: class.

I first smoked marijuana in, I think, the mid-Seventies. It's only
ever been an occasional pleasure but over the years I've shared a
joint with barristers, MPs, newspaper editors, a high court judge, at
least two members of the House of Lords, and captains of industry as
well as the rag bag of TV producers, media people, musicians and
general low-lifes who are most often associated with drug taking.

Nobody has ever made a big deal about it. The meal ends, somebody
opens another bottle, a second person brings out some cigarette papers
and a little bag of grass or dope and mutters: "Er, does anyone mind
if..?" Were it not for the dope, it could easily be a cliched scene
from a bad Gold Blend ad.

Nobody ever does mind, of course. Why should they? Certainly nobody
has ever said: "But don't you realise? Smoke that tonight and tomorrow
you'll be shooting up in a gutter and selling your pinpricked body to
strangers" or even: "For God's sake man: it's illegal!" And so the
joint is passed round the table. Nobody refers to the fact - not out
of embarrassment or fear but for the same reason they wouldn't refer
to a bottle of wine or a box of After Eight mints being passed round
the table. In most big cities, at least, it's part of a middle-class
life.

We don't worry about marijuana being the first step on the slippery
slope to drug addiction because we know that in years of occasional
use we've never found ourselves saying to ourselves: "Wow! That was
good. Let's see what other illegal drugs we can find." We don't much
think about the statistics which suggest that dope is rather more
likely to give you cancer than is plain tobacco because we know that
few people smoke cannabis in the quantities they smoke cigarettes. Nor
do we worry about driving while under the influence because we're not
stupid enough to drive while stoned.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my high-minded friends or smoking
acquaintances has ever mugged somebody to get the money for their next
joint: invariably, the drug is acquired discreetly from friends of
friends and although we don't pay for it by credit card, we would if
we could. We are sensible, middle-class people and we use our drugs
sensibly.

It's everyone else we worry about. We know enough not to smoke half a
dozen joints and then try to drive a coach full of pensioners - but we
can't believe that coach drivers are as intelligent as we are. We know
enough not to smoke in the quantities which will bring on psychosis or
cancer or bronchitis - but we don't think others are as restrained as
we are.

It's the worst sort of hypocrisy - the sort based not on rational
belief but on snobbery.

More than this, we know we almost certainly won't get arrested for our
occasional pleasure. We are discreet about our dope. We tend not to
drive the sort of beaten-up cars which get pulled over by the police,
or walk, late at night, through the shady parts of town where the
police routinely stop and search the local citizens.

What's more, everyone knows this: it's just that they won't come out
and say it.

For the past three years, I've been writing about my throat cancer in
one of our most respected broadsheet papers. A year or so ago, I wrote
that having given up smoking when I was diagnosed as cancerous, I'd
started again when it became apparent that the cancer was incurable.
I'd started, I said, because somebody had sent me some cannabis to
help with the side effects of chemotherapy and that rolling the dope
with tobacco had rekindled my dormant nicotine addiction.

Since then, I've written a few times about smoking and a few about
using cannabis. I've had hundreds of letters from people outraged that
I smoke cigarettes, and probably rightly so, but not one from a reader
pointing out that by smoking dope I'm breaking the law.

I can't pretend that I worry too much about breaking the drugs law,
but there are moments that I am conscious that by using dope I'm at
the consuming end of a business which involves all sorts of local
evils in South America and the Far East where the stuff is grown. I
wish I wasn't: I'd infinitely prefer my drugs to come from farmers who
run their businesses in the way that tobacco farmers or wine growers
do. But that won't happen until we have a real debate about marijuana
- - a debate that acknowledges that most ordinary people are just as
sensible as those current and ex-dope smokers who pass the laws
against dope smoking.