SMOKING OUT THE HYPOCRITES

I spent an extremely relaxed Sunday with a prominent MEP, sharing a
couple of joints of skunk

There are 87 British MEPs, just 15 of them Conservative, and they all
seem united in their lack of sympathy with Tom Spencer's fall. His
crimes, the law enforcers have made it abundantly clear, do not amount
to very much in their book - a spot fine and no further
questions asked. The politicians, however, take a sterner view and
need nothing less than the ruin of a solid and useful political career.

It's an emerging pattern. The law no longer feels it useful to mete
out serious punishment on some matters - particularly for crimes
involving personal drug use - but employers take up the gauntlet
instead, not just in high-profile cases such as this one, but
routinely as workplace drug-testing becomes ever more prevalent. Why
is it that employers can be judge and jury, while judges and juries
are not considered to be necessary in resolving these matters? Surely
there is something intrinsically unfair and undemocratic in the trend
towards civil punishment.

I for one find Tom Spencer's blanket civil punishment for a ragbag of
crimes and misdemeanours confusing, especially when no guidelines
beyond media speculation are given as to what the sacking offence was.
Everyone's agreed that it's not because he's gay, while the legal
action taken against him suggests that he's not considered to be a
criminal, because he has not been charged. Even the gay videos seem to
have been not porn as such but a memento from a lover who had been
sanctioned by his wife.

It must surely be the gram and a half of cocaine that he told customs
he was also carrying which made his position untenable, but I think
it's important that this should be precisely and publicly stated. We
can't carry on lumping class A and class B drugs in together as
equally heinous, because it's no longer making any sense at all, to
either adults or children.

I'd certainly welcome some clarity on the matter, because there's one
thing I know for sure. Tom Spencer isn't the only MEP who has ever
inhaled cannabis. Last summer I spent an extremely pleasant and
notably relaxed Sunday afternoon with a prominent MEP, with whom the
assembled company shared a couple of joints of skunk weed.

He didn't appear to be a habitual user, nor did he seem to be an
ingenu. Although he of course knew that smoking dope was illegal, his
actions suggested that he was not remotely in agreement with the law
on this matter (despite the fact that his publicly stated views on
drugs have suggested a different view).

Maybe he's forgotten the entire incident, for the drug did have a
minor detrimental effect on his short-term memory. He telephoned us
later in the day and explained jovially that after leaving the party
he had treated himself to a post-prandial nap. Falling asleep to the
sound of Radio 4 paying tribute to William Burroughs, who had died the
previous evening, he awoke to hear some biographical details about
Samuel Taylor Coleridge drifting from the radio.

"Goodness," he thought. "This is a heavy weekend for druggie writers!
They're dropping like flies!" A few moments later, he recalled that in
fact Coleridge had been lost to the world some time before that
weekend, and put his temporary lapse down to the heady substance he'd
partaken of after lunch. His call to share this with us confirmed that
he clearly considered the whole experience to have been an amusing
adventure and nothing more.

Now his memory appears to have failed him again, because he feels no
need to stand up and be counted alongside Tom Spencer as a cannabis
dabbler. Certainly, Spencer has broken the law in using cannabis, but
this gentleman has too. I have no wish to name Pothead MEP number two,
because, along with his penchant for a little blow, he has another
thing in common with Tom Spencer. He is a good and diligent member of
the European Parliament, committed both to Europe and to his British
voters.

We certainly can't afford to lose people of his calibre over a crime
such as this one, any more than we can afford to lose Tom Spencer.
Anyway, such a cull, if embarked on, would be massive. A fifth of new
MPs who joined the Commons after the last election admit to having
taken cannabis; Clare Short got herself into hot water for hinting
that some of her ministerial colleagues had taken cannabis, and even
MPs who themselves have never taken cannabis can be no more certain
than Jack Straw that they speak for their nearest and dearest, too.

This is the central reason why the Government's enthusiasm for zero
tolerance for even class B drugs is ill-advised and, in broader terms,
is why the law and and the police appear unwilling to enforce such a
policy. Schools too, have sensibly declared themselves unwilling to
exclude pupils who are caught with cannabis. And even the drugs tsar,
Keith Hellawell, seems reluctant fully to embrace the mantra of his
masters, as he advises that employees failing drug tests should be
offered help and not their P45s. Unappointed guardians of the nation's
moral welfare would be best advised not to apply zero tolerance to
cannabis, either. In a recent survey 53 per cent of the population
admitted to having tried it. They can't all be forced to resign from
their jobs.

And we can't operate sensibly as a society with a degree of hypocrisy
as huge as this and so very plain to see. Just as I have to square the
decent, intelligent MEP with a fat joint in his hand with the man who
won't lift those same fingers to defend his fellow Europhile, children
up and down the country have to square information demonising dope
smokers with glimpses of their upstanding and otherwise law-abiding
parents doing odd things to cigarettes after they're supposed to be in
bed.

I'm reminded of my dope-smoking friend who was asked whether she'd be
taking her children on the legalise cannabis march organised by this
paper's sister, The Independent on Sunday, under the editorship of
Rosie "Rizla" Boycott. "God, no," she guffawed. "They'd be absolutely
furious if they found out that that stuff their mother smokes was
actually an illegal substance!"

Like her, I don't particularly want to rock the boat. I don't think
cannabis should be legalised immediately, but I do think that general
attitudes to drugs, and particularly drugs education in schools,
should fully reflect the tolerant attitudes displayed by the legal
profession and the police towards cannabis offences.

I don't even reject links between cannabis and harder drugs. As heavy
drinkers are more likely to smoke, smokers are more likely to be
cannabis users, and cannabis users are more likely to use hard drugs.
We have as much chance of changing this pattern as we have of
achieving prohibition of alcohol.

Legality and illegality has little to do with it, beyond the fact that
pushing people into the black market to obtain something as ubiquitous
as cannabis may not be helpful in breaking the soft drugs-to-hard
drugs chain.

But I do think that we have to be absolutely honest if we are to bring
up our children to understand the true dangers of drugs. Children
don't like being lied to, and the use of cannabis is too widespread
for them to know only what they are told about it at school.

They ought to be told what the New Scientist has told us: alcohol use
is more damaging than cannabis use. Then they'll have far more reason
to believe their teachers when they are told about the very real
dangers of far more dangerous drugs. All the withdrawal of Tom Spencer
from public life has taught them is that we're as unsure about what's
right, what's wrong and what's tolerable as they are. It's not much of
a message.

Edward McMillan-Scott, who led the delegation of Tory MEPs asking for
Spencer's resignation, should now give a clear and unequivocal
statement explaining just exactly why it was that his colleague had to
go, and which of his crimes, if committed by other elected
representatives, would lead inexorably to their own
resignation.