ROLLING IN THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF HOME

More Young Highlanders Smoke Dope Than Tobacco.

ONCE upon a time you had to be a long-haired incomer with a beard or a
tie-dyed dress, or both, to be a fully qualified Highlands & Islands dope
smoker. Cannabis culture took root in the north of Scotland partly because
committed dope smokers from the towns and cities could indulge their habits
without too much risk of constabulary interference and partly because the
plants grew well in the long hours of summer daylight. The added
availability of magic mushrooms added narcotic spice to rural life without
blowing its image.

Things are different now. While some grizzled old hippies remain, puffing
on their neatly rolled joints, water pipes or chillums, others have
metamorphosed into leading community figures, smartly besuited yet prone to
take the odd puff at weekends while listening to Incredible String Band or
John Martyn re-releases, or thinking they are cool because they like Ocean
Colour Scene.

The key difference is among indigenous young people. Dope smoking is
endemic now among rural teenagers - compared to alcohol it is cheaper and
more easily available when you are under-age - but many have grown up in an
environment where soft drug use is commonplace. This week, the drugs agency
Blast revealed that it is not just aging hippies who are partial to the odd
joint; Highland teenagers are not as estranged from drugs as their elders
might like to suppose. The survey results showed that more teenagers smoke
cannabis than tobacco, and Blast now intends to blow open Highland drug
culture to greater scrutiny.

The Blast statistics, for those still won by the country bumpkin
stereotype, are therefore alarming. Invited to what Blast co-ordinator
Natalie Morel terms a "safer dancing event", (a rave with paramedics in
attendance) 300 young people were courted from the Inverness club scene and
polled for their experience with drugs. The results show that 76 per cent
admitted they had taken cannabis, against 63 per cent of tobacco smokers.

Amphetamine use was admitted to by 65 per cent, Ecstasy by 74 per cent and
LSD by 35 per cent of the 17 to 35-year-olds.

These statistics come in the wake of a national survey of 8,000 15 to
16-year-olds which revealed that over a third living in rural areas have
tried illegal drugs, compared to less than 20 per cent in the inner cities.

Is Morel surprised? "No, not when you consider that in terms of national
figures, 500,000 people go out every weekend and take drugs."

She emphasises that the results of the Blast survey do not exceed the
national average but equal them. "There has not been a rise in use in the
Highlands but rather a rise in acknowledging use. People are beginning to
come forward and talk about it for the first time," she says.

What they are talking about is a Highland drug culture as far removed from
its Seventies antecedents as the rest of today's sophisticated youth
pastimes such as surfing the Internet and staring at Sony Playstations. The
benefits of isolation remain for cultivators, as they did in generations
past for illegal distillers. Although now there is no need for open-air
allotments of cannabis plants in old sheep-pens. Hydroponic growth systems
and ultra-violet lights have changed everything, and the premium strains of
grass - Black Isle and Orkney were once both much sought after - have given
way to the Netherlands-sourced varieties of superstrong Skunk, popular
throughout Europe. Or there is plain old hash brought in by fishing boat to
the West Coast.

But what about the foundations of the problem, the social climate which
persuades the young people to use illegal substances in the first place?

Roger Hutchinson, a writer who has lived on Skye since 1977, has noticed a
change in the behaviour of young Highlanders. He says: "Highland kids do
not live in isolation. This romantic fantasy of Gaelic-speaking toddlers is
inaccurate. They have city cousins, they travel. Recreational use of soft
drugs is a big problem in rural England."

Drug usage in the Highlands is an inevitable extension of that. Morel
agrees: "Youngsters in the Highlands are much more likely to travel to
Inverness and some will go down to Dundee to get whatever the [drugs] order
is."

Deprived young people, it seems, wherever they live, seek escape through
drugs. Remote communities can suffer from an excitement deficit which
experimentation with drugs may go some way towards sating.

But, says Ian McCormack, the editor of the Skye-based newspaper, the West
Highland Free Press, such motivations are hardly exclusive to rural areas.

The boredom factor in Highland drug-taking is, he says, "as relevant to
rural areas as it is to teenagers living in housing schemes in Glasgow who
don't want to spend their time going to church youth groups".

Keith Paterson, the co-ordinator of Aberdeen Drugs Action, has been
interested in the rural drug problem since 1994, when he helped set up a
branch in Banff Buchan. He says: "Four years on and there is a growing
demand for the service, particularly among 16 to 25-year-olds. The survey
results didn't come as a surprise to us at all."

"In my experience there has long been use of cannabis and, sometimes, speed
in the Highlands."

So why all the excitement?

McCormack says: "Drug-taking here attracts publicity because it defies the
'quaint' rural label. But in my experience there has long been use of
cannabis and, sometimes, speed in the Highlands."