POT USERS RELAX WITH NEW LAW

Britain: A Pilot Program That Eased Marijuana Penalties In A London
Neighborhood Is Set To Go National.

LONDON -- His eyes narrowed to slits and his mouth widened in a half-moon
grin, Michael Anderson is ready to tell anybody who asks that, "Yes, my
friend, I been smoking the weed."

He will tell even the police about his high from the marijuana. Last week,
as he has done for months, he leaned back on a park bench and blew
marijuana smoke toward two constables in the south London neighborhood of
Brixton. As announced last week by the government, lovers of "weed" or
cannabis, as it is known here, will be free to smoke it in Britain almost
wherever and whenever they want.

The laboratory for the new policy was Anderson's home of Brixton.

For months, police have been largely ignoring him and others toking in
storefronts and back alleys, in the public squares and on private porches.
The results, according to Scotland Yard, include an increase in arrests of
people using hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine and a decrease in
property and violent crime because constables are freed up.

What will happen outside of Brixton, though, is anybody's guess. The
district is hardly typical of Britain.

A neighborhood populated largely by Brits of Caribbean descent, it is like
another country. In an outdoor food market, whole goats and chickens,
skinned and plucked, hang by their legs. Jamaican music bounces off
storefronts lining narrow streets. Accents are thickly Caribbean.

And then there is the drug use. Finding marijuana in Brixton is as easy as
finding apples on Electric Avenue, the street made famous by the song of
the same name by Eddy Grant: "We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue / And
then we'll take it higher."

Although many residents here, from the Caribbean and elsewhere, have little
tolerance for drugs, marijuana has long been part of the culture for many
others, particularly those of Jamaican descent. One of the reasons Brixton
was chosen for the drug experiment was simply the amount of time police
were spending rounding up people smoking marijuana while users of crack
cocaine were causing havoc elsewhere in the area.

"It was crazy with the police," says Anderson, slumped on a bench in
Brixton Oval, the town's central park. "They come, you hide; they go, you
smoke. People smoke crack, they are crazy. People smoke the weed, they
relax. Fight the crack. Why fight the cannabis?"

That, in street talk, was the argument last week from Prime Minister Tony
Blair and Home Secretary David Blunkett, who explained to the House of
Commons that marijuana possession would no longer be an arrestable offense
as long as it was used discreetly, meaning not around children. Dealing
will still be outlawed, and, in a move to defuse criticism over the new
policy, prison terms will be increased to 14 years from five for those
supplying the drug.

Technically, marijuana remains illegal, downgraded from a category of drug
that included Ecstasy to one that includes barbiturates. The new policy,
which localities are to begin implementing before it formally takes effect
next year, still allows for two-year sentences for users, but police have
been instructed merely to issue warnings.

"Cannabis is a potential harmful drug and should remain illegal," Blunkett
told the House of Commons. "However, it is not comparable with crack,
heroin or Ecstasy. A greater differentiation between drugs which kill and
drugs that cause harm is both scientifically justified and educationally
sensible."

Relaxing the drug laws, though, has been met with as much shouting in
Britain as might be expected if the same proposals were made by a major
political party in the United States. While criticism of the decision was
predictable from the Conservative Party, the change in law was also met
with the resignation of a government adviser who once served as the prime
minister's anti-drug chief.

And although Anderson and his fellow tokers may like the new policy, many
people in Brixton - and elsewhere in the country - do not.

"It only opens the door for people to get their next drugs, the more
dangerous ones," says Ann Almond, 35, as she weighed fruit at her stand on
Electric Avenue, marijuana smokers less than 30 yards from her. "What are
we supposed to tell the children? Cannabis is bad for you, it's illegal,
but go ahead and smoke it wherever you want?"

Even with the change, Britain's drug laws remain less liberal than those of
some other countries of the European Union. Germany and Italy, for example,
have legalized "shooting galleries" for heroin addicts; the Netherlands
allows the sale of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in designated
bars and coffee shops.

Officially, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police support the new
policy, but many constables do not. Of six who were interviewed about it
last week, comments from Constables David Church and Sally Wilkinson were
typical. Walking their beat near the Brixton subway stop, they spotted a
man who they seemed certain was dealing marijuana. When they stopped him,
though, he had only a small amount of the drug on him.

"So we have to let him go, which is crazy," Church says. "He knows that the
only step he has to take to avoid arrest is to keep the cannabis hidden
somewhere else, then run small amounts to his regular customers."

But for now, thanks to what Blair and Blunkett admit is purely an
experiment on a larger scale than that in Brixton, the marijuana smokers
can light up with as much immunity as the cigarette smokers.

That sits just fine with Gerald Mousset, 30, who is not shy about
acknowledging that at the end of a day working at Joy, the clothing store
he manages, he enjoys rolling a fat joint, or a "spliff." Since the change
came to Brixton, he says, the town has been more relaxed, and not because
everybody is high.

"It was a farce with people hiding from the police," he says. "Now we don't
have that. Now, if I want to smoke, I can smoke without worry. For me,
smoking's just relaxing. If I have one drink, it doesn't mean I'm an
alcoholic. If I have one spliff, it doesn't mean I'm a drug addict."