WHY CAN'T OUR POLITICIANS COME CLEAN ON DRUGS?

What is the single most curable evil afflicting community life in
London? The answer is the criminalisation of drug use under the 1971
Misuse of Drugs Act.

It blights half the capital's youth at some stage or other. It hovers
as a black cloud over every neighbourhood, pub and street corner. It
causes crime and gangland disorder. It packs the courts and fills the
prisons. It costs billions of pounds in personal loss and public spending.

Needless to say, not one party in the current General Election is
prepared to discuss it. As a result, London is about to be taught a
lesson in social policy by, of all places, America.

As I whiled away last week waiting in Los Angeles for Her Majesty's
Government to find an ash cloud policy, I decided to pop into one of
many local cannabis "dispensaries" -- strictly in the interests of research.

While the exteriors are carefully anonymous, the interiors are
designed to cater for all whom "a doctor" has decided need the
therapeutic benefits of a dose of "weed". I could choose between
Harmony House and Holistic Harvest. I could try Nature's Wonder or
Mary and Jane's mobile delivery service. The Green Oasis chain offers
"40 flavours" of cannabis, including Sour Diesel, Blue Dream and
Woody Kush, plus a 1,300 square meter "vaporising lounge" to help
things go swimmingly along. In most cases, the requisite chit
certifying medical need is available on the premises, like club
membership in a casino.

California now makes Amsterdam's drug laws look timid. Since the
licensing of "medical marijuana" production and sale in 1996,
California and 14 states across America have seen a blossoming of
cannabis retailing. Some estimates are of more dispensaries (or
"clinics") in Los Angeles than Starbucks. The city authorities reckon
they have at least 500 and possibly 1,000 outlets, meaning that in
some areas there are more dispensaries than there are bars serving alcohol.

Since reliable figures are hard to find, it is impossible to discover
whether the result has been an increase or decrease in the overall
consumption of marijuana. Use of the drug has come out of the closet.
There are certainly testimonials to the relief of pain delivered, and
with it a reduction in need for conventional medicine. There is a
corresponding reduction in pressure on law enforcement and
imprisonment. Anecdotal evidence suggests that private growers are
supplanting the criminal gangs who have long imported supplies from Canada.

More serious is the backlash against a spread of outlets that seem to
cock a snook at the law, which restricts sale to those in medical
need. Our old friend, stress, is so often cited as to render the
restriction meaningless. As a result, two moves are now afoot. A Los
Angeles city ordinance seeks to limit the number of outlets to 70.
This would mean savage closures, in effect creating local licensed
monopolies bound up in a tangle of red tape. But the effect would be
clear, as the mayor has said, "to regulate the collective cultivation
of medical marijuana" and to end the proliferation of operators who
are currently "not inspected or analysed by the US Food and Drug
administration". In other words, the marketing of the drug under
pseudo-medical conditions would be as legitimate as alcohol.

A more radical proposition, on which Californians will vote in
November, is to legalise the consumption of marijuana as such and do
away with the medical facade. It would be allowed to over-21s, who
could grow their own and possess a maximum of one ounce per person.
What is sold in shops would be inspected as pure. It would be
approved and taxed, like alcohol. In a recent poll, half of
Californians wanted to see the drug taxed, if only to relieve the
state's crippling budget deficit.

Such legalisation would run contrary to US federal policy, as well as
various United Nations protocols. But Barack Obama has already said
he will not enforce federal policy against states that have eased
marijuana controls. Pressure across America to end this form of
prohibition is now growing from the bottom up, though as with the
ending of alcohol prohibition it is unlikely to be everywhere or overnight.

For those like me who regard cannabis as a potentially dangerous
substance for many young people, California's route to regulatory
control and, if necessary, treatment is sane. Nor does it make sense
to decriminalise use but criminalise supply, since they are part of
the same market sequence. There is no point in removing the police
from the front of the house merely to send them to the back.

Whether the same common sense can be extended to the greater curse of
cocaine remains to be seen. No one reading the American press can be
in any doubt of the horrendous cost to Latin American states of the
continued criminalisation of coca products. It has reduced large
parts of Mexico to a lawless jungle, as a result of the gigantic
profits available from America's cocaine trade -- said to be on a par
with the oil industry. Heavily armed cartels are massacring each
other daily in the streets. The policy is plunging half a continent
into misery.

The encouraging sign is that, when Americans are asked what they
would like done about a problem, they answer with the beginnings of a
solution. When California has brought its cannabis use under control,
perhaps it can start grappling with its far greater challenge,
cocaine and heroin.

And London? It has the toughest drug laws and the worst drugs problem
in Europe. We jam our courts and our prisons with young people, to no
beneficial effect and at vast cost. I imagine that Londoners might
indeed vote for a California-style proposition to license and
regulate marijuana in the capital, to reduce the power of the gangs,
help the young cope with drugs and raise revenue.

But I cannot imagine any national politician allowing it, certain not
at election time. We still have a long way to go to democracy.