'THE HIPPY HASH DEALER IS EXTINCT. EVIL PUSHERS RULE'

EWAN Cairns looks back on the past 15 years of his life and wonders if
it could have been so different. The 28-year-old believes he might not
have entered the downward spiral that brought him into the drug
"culture" if cannabis had been decriminalised.

Mr Cairns, who lives in Edinburgh, the setting for Irvine Welsh's
Trainspotting, attends a programme for former addicts run by the
charity, Turning Point Scotland. He began smoking cannabis before he
was a teenager but he argues that if the drug was available in coffee
shops, it might stop teenagers coming into contact with the dealers of
more dangerous substances.

He said: "Nowadays the people dealing hash are dealing other
substances as well. It would be better if hash was available at coffee
shops so that people are not offered other types of drugs. At the
moment, the way it usually works is that you go to buy your cannabis
and the dealer tells you he doesn't have any. He then offers you
another substance which he says is like hash but better. That is the
way many kids get into hard drugs."

Mr Cairns, the father of a 10-year-old boy, said cannabis dealers used
to be "older, hippy types" who did not trade in other substances.
However, dealers today made fortunes and "don't care what they are
selling to whom". He added: "I smoked cannabis for years before I was
offered harder drugs. I suppose I took the harder drugs because it was
the fashion, it was peer pressure."

Mr Cairns, whose wife died five years ago, has often paid for hard
drugs through shoplifting or prescription fraud. He added: "I have
been to jail a couple of times. After a decade of drugs, I lost my
wife. I have a son and I realised my life was becoming chaotic. I had
to do something for the sake of my son."

Some drug counsellors also believe cannabis should be decriminalised
to regulate the market. One said: "There are a lot of impurities in
cannabis. They mix it with such things as bin liners, which can cause
damage to lungs." Two other recovering addicts, who wished to be
referred to only by their first names, Andrew, 27, and John 26, also
said they had taken hard drugs after smoking cannabis.

John said dealers would still find a way of "making a buck" whether
cannabis was decriminalised or not. "I smoked cannabis on and off
through school, and by the time I was 16 I was smoking it every day. I
found I was not getting as stoned as when I first started using it. I
wanted something to make me feel good. I turned to hard drugs and now
I don't really have a lot in my life, which is why I am here."

Andy said: "I started smoking cannabis at 15 and a year later I was
offered pills. I don't believe people should be dragged through the
courts for the sake of half an ounce of cannabis."