THE OTHER MAN'S GRASS

Wildest Dreams edited by Richard Rudgely LittleBrown UKP18.99, pp417

Cannabis Culture by Patrick Matthews Bloomsbury UKP12.99, pp244

Forbidden Drugs by Philip Robson OUP UKP12.99, pp301

THE GREEK WORD pharmakon means both cure and poison; Derrida makes much of
this in his reading of Plato's 'Phaedrus'. The homology is not as exciting
as, in Derrida's hands, it first appears; the difference is simply one of
degree, as Paracelsus had made clear long before Plato was writing. Today,
the same problem arises when we talk about drugs and drug abuse; more often
than not, we are using the phrase within a legal context- 'drugs', in common
parlance, are illegal. State-sanctioned substances that change us in some
fashion are either called medicines or, in the case of alcohol and tobacco,
escape any clear terminology. Derrida does go on, tenuously, to discuss
another word, pharmakos, which (depending on how you pronounce it) means
either 'magician' or 'scapegoat'. This dichotomy fortuitously expresses our
current approach to 'drugs' and 'dealers', emotive words which conjure up
pictures that do not always reflect the realities they purport to describe.

Any subculture or underground -any marginal, deviant or illegal group (in
the vocabularies of politics, sociology or jurisprudence)- develops a
'culture' and a 'literature'; indeed, it is arguable that the discovery of a
history and a literature, and the production of representations of such
cultures, is an important step between margin and mainstream. These three
books make different claims for the drug culture, but all, in their
different ways, are keen to combat both the ignorance that leads to
scapegoating, and also the overblown claims that drugs have magical, vital
and necessary qualities.

'Wildest Dreams' is 'an anthology of drug-related literature'; it does not,
mercifully, advance the thesis that great writing emerges from a
'dereglement de tous les sens' (as Rimbaud put it). Indeed, Will Self's
piece on W. S. Burroughs ('The Great Junksman') is a sensible reflection on
the asinine equation of illicit drug use and creativity, and a call to
praise the work, not the chemistry. Likewise, Errol Flynn's account of opium
addiction has some pleasant realism to it: "The more I experimented - that's
what I called it-the less I wrote. I began to wonder how De Quincey had done
it. What I wrote made no sense at all.'

Most of the pieces are nowhere near as interesting. Rudgely's random
approach to selection is never properly explained, apart from a tilt at an
Aunt Sally ('to dispel the ridiculous yet widely held belief that "it all
started in the Sixties'") and a reference to Burroughs's literary cut-up
technique, which doesn't survive serious thought. Many of the pieces are
accounts of drug taking from antiquity to the present day; they are,
necessarily, 'emotion recollected in tranquillity' and many are only as
interesting as hearing about someone else's acid trips (not at all).

Recreational drug users are often enthusiastic and even evangelical, but
they are no more witty or stylish than anyone else, and contain a fair
proportion of bores. Nor are their accounts necessarily representative;
altered states of consciousness are, by definition, quite personal, and even
De Quincey dismisses anyone else's account of opium use ('Nonsense.').

If Rudgely, however vaguely, is giving drugs a literary and historical
context, Patrick Matthews's excellent 'Cannabis Culture' is a thorough
portrait of an entire sociocultural phenomenon. By focusing on the most
popular and least dangerous drug, Matthews comes up with intelligent and
wide-ranging insights into the formation of a 'culture'. The medical,
physiological, ritual, social, legal, literary and historic aspects are
treated thoroughly; his political conclusions steer away from wilder
conspiracy theories and weigh up the pros and cons of legalisation.

Matthews is a wine writer by trade and brings a background in
connoisseurship and practical botany to bear on cannabis. His interviews and
sources are plentiful, and anecdotes sugar the pill of historical, legal and
horticultural fact that he provides; his book is wholly readable,
fantastically sane, and, though ultimately partial, as balanced as possible
given the facts. The harmlessness and the medical and social benefits of
this unaddictive plant are impressively established. What enrages him is
ignorance and a 'war on drugs' that entitles governments to burn other
people's crops and impound vast amounts of property, while not improving
levels of addiction or crime.

One could take the book as a great contribution to the argument for
legalisation, but Matthews is even more interesting than that; having
described the love which growers put into their crops, and the
non-profiteering aspects of the culture, he is aware that legalisation might
put the drug into the hands of big business. Overpriced and inferior
products would be foisted onto the market, and lovers of the very best grass
would become like Cambra members, worthy and unfashionable, fighting a
lonely battle against hegemonic big business.

Legalisation campaigners are torn between wanting the state to leave
cannabis alone, but relying on the state to protect their beloved herb from
multinational corporations.

Philip Robson's 'Forbidden Drugs', now in its second edition, is a sensible
and authoritative piece of work by a psychiatrist with a background in
pharmacology and rehabilitation. Like Matthews's book it deserves to be read
by teenagers, users, parents and legislators. It has clear accounts, drug by
drug, of histories, physiological effects, upsides and downsides and
mortality rates.

It ends with an appeal to reassess the insanely expensive war-on-drugs
approach favoured by every government, which cannot prove financial or
social efficacy; whereas every UKP1 spent on treatment for addicts, saves
UKP3 in reduced crime costs. That figure emerged from a government-funded study.

To order 'Wildest Dreams' for UKP15.99, 'Cannabis Culture' for UKP9.99 or
'Forbidden Drugs' for UKP9.99 plus 99p p&p, call Observer CultureShop on
0500 500 171.