THE HASH MAN CALLS

An anonymous midnight conversation opens a door to the world of drugs The
hash man calls "Why have you rung?" It was midnight. I was speaking to an
anonymous caller. I recognised the voice as that of the man who had
telephoned me at The Times room at the House of Commons, earlier that week,
saying he didn't know me, but wanted to talk about drugs; in an article on
this page I had mentioned a programme I was making for BBC Radio Five Live
on the subject; he thought I should talk to someone who knew, instead of
just politicians. Could we talk, with him remaining anonymous? I said he
could ring me at my London flat at midnight. He agreed. Awaiting the call I
prepared questions, the first being "Why have you rung?" "I sell marijuana."
The voice was of a youngish, but not very young, man; the manner that of a
reasonably thoughtful, by no means ignorant person. "Are you a dealer?" I
asked. "Yeah," he said, though he seemed to bridle at the term. There was no
way - I was beginning to realise - that I could use this on my programme
next month. I suspected that what he wanted to say might be
self-incriminatory. This would be an abuse of his trust. But I could
abstract a short, publishable account from a longer conversation. "Who are
your customers?" "Professional working people, all of them. It's different
to the way we come across in the media."

"What sort of professionals?" "Lawyers, teachers, journ . . ." he stopped
himself ". . . people who work in the City. . ."

"Are you dealing full time?" Silence. "Do you have any other job?" "No." He
was beginning to sound put out by my line of questioning. Odd, given that he
had volunteered the conversation. I sensed his intention had been to give me
his opinions about the hypocrisy of politicians, whereas mine was to learn
more about the nuts and bolts of his own trade. I persisted. "Do you make a
reasonable living?" I asked. "Keeps the wolf from the door. But not as far
from the door as I'd like." "Are you as rich as your customers? As a
lawyer?" "No." "As a teacher?" "No, nowhere near that league." "You sell
only marijuana?" "Yeah."

It's worth interjecting here that from what I have been able to discover,
marijuana dealers in Britain are a distinct breed within the species, most
of them fairly small-time, many uninvolved in any other kinds of drugs.
Their trade is pretty steady and their overall turnover may be levelling
off. I asked him about his suppliers, but he would not answer. I asked about
his own profit margin.

"I'm not saying that. There's a certain person with me in the room who I
happen to be doing a bit of business with at the moment and I'm not saying
that in front of them - know what I mean?"

"What's your relationship with your customers?" "Sociable. More than being a
plumber." "How is contact made?" "Telephone, usually." "So they have your
number?" I was surprised. This did not sound like a nail-biting life on the
criminal fringe. "Yeah. I just give it." "You deliver?" "Door-to-door." "For
cash?" "Depends. There's always the 'pay-you-next-week' ones to watch out
for."

I put it to him that many of his countrymen (and, I suspect, my readers)
would say the main objection to marijuana is not the drug itself but that it
can become the gateway to harder drugs. He seemed incredulous at the
suggestion. No more than alcohol, he said. His customers were no more on the
slide towards injecting heroin than The Times's distinguished wine critic is
on the way to drinking Brasso.

On my travels through Britain's drugs scene I have found a huge disjunction
between a popular fear (honestly felt, I believe) that soft drugs taken for
leisure are the first stop on a descent into ruinous addiction, and the
commentary and experience of those familiar with drugs. My telephone
caller's customers were not, he insisted, into other drugs besides
marijuana, though when pressed he conceded it was possible that some
professional people also took cocaine "for recreational use, like at the
weekend". "Recreational? Give me an example."

"Do you know any lawyers? Anyone that comes home from a day's work. They
need to unwind." I asked how initial contact was made. "Grapevine . . . all
sorts of ways."

He did not want to give me "a load of techno-babble", he said. I presume he
meant Internet. He "waited to hear", he said.

"People talk of drug pushers. Do you ever push?" "No, not at all." He waited
for the pull, he said. "I mean sometimes I'm sitting at home and my feet are
up by the fire and I don't want to go anywhere, and my phone rings and I
have to go out into the cold. It's a hard life," he said with a chuckle;
like being a tradesman, a plumber . . . "Yeah. Frozen pipes."

I suggested that this was not how society viewed dealers. There was sympathy
for users, I said, but not dealers, who were regarded as the "scum of the
earth". "If there's a personal tragedy, yes, I understand. But then they
throw a whole bunch of us, all different, in the same hole and piss on us.
But it's supply and demand, isn't it? Nobody who knows me thinks I'm a bad
guy or anything like that."

His insistence that he was a pretty straight sort of a guy put me in mind of
someone else. "Tony Blair," I said, "in his speech to the Labour Party
conference, said parents were scared of dropping their kids off at school,
into the arms of drug dealers. Are you aware of this kind of thing
happening?"

"I've got a son," he said. "I hope it doesn't." "Would you sell to kids?"

"I wouldn't dream of it." But then he doesn't sell Ecstasy. I asked him
about this. I told him about a woman I visited in Scotland whose son had
died from Ecstasy. This was (for me) a harrowing interview. My anonymous
caller sounded sincere in his sympathy - and No, he said, he wouldn't like
it if anything like that happened to his boy. But his view seemed to be that
you would never by law stop kids from getting hold of things they wanted,
and it was better to teach them how to handle what they met in life. He
thought Ecstasy was less dangerous than much else we encounter, like
tobacco. I was struck by how unfamiliar he seemed with the drugs scene
beyond that which he inhabited. My mental picture of a "drugs underworld" or
dealer community, a shadowy Britain in which knowing people slide between
one drug and another, all in touch with what is going on, was fading. I
asked him about The Netherlands, and the cannabis cafes in Amsterdam which I
had just visited. Should we decriminalise here, I asked?

"Depends. What we've got here isn't working. It's making criminals out of
people. I mean I don't call myself a bad person but I'm involved in what is
regarded as a criminal activity."

So should marijuana be legal? He hesitated. "With one reservation . . . if
it was, I'd be out of a job." In fact, for the relaxed lifestyle he liked
best, the present position seemed almost ideal. An enhanced price in return
for a modest risk, a degree of opprobrium, and a friendly, intimate business
relationship with customers. Could it really be this easy? I asked him if
the virtual amnesty I had encountered in central Manchester was general. I
was careless enough to talk about "the streets" of Manchester. "I don't hang
around on the streets." Here was another popular misconception of which I've
been disabused during my researches. Politicians like to talk about "our
streets" but the drugs sector of our economy has found a far more
comfortable home. You won't stop it "on the streets" any more. You'll have
to raid sitting-rooms, search cars and open the mail. What, then, did his
customers have to fear? What, I asked, was the police attitude to
possession?

"A little bit of marijuana's not much of a problem." "Is your job dangerous?
Do you feel any kind of a threat?" "No." "But don't you have to dodge the
law?"

"Keep an eye out, that's all." "What are the chances you'll get caught in
any one year?" "Pretty slim."

"Then the police are giving up the fight?" "Fight? I'm not under the
impression there's any sort of a fight." "That's perfectly obvious."

Twenty minutes on the telephone to a man I didn't know, and already I was a
world away from the last 20 years of politicians' speeches to party
conferences. How much of this do they know? I interviewed Jack Straw on
Wednesday, but I still haven't the least idea.