DRUGS: SO WHAT DO WE TELL OUR KIDS?

FOLLOWING David Blunkett's reclassification of cannabis, fears have been
expressed that the drug will be more easily available on city streets.

But can it be bought openly already? Tom Mack went to investigate - and
what he found makes for disturbing reading.

I Wanted to know how easy it is to obtain cannabis in Peterborough and I
was shocked by what I found.

Driving from the city centre offices of The Evening Telegraph, I felt there
was little chance of success. I believed my images of dealers on street
corners were nothing more than fantasy, based on fiction and the world
according to Hollywood.

I had no idea I would be able to approach a total stranger, strike a deal
and be back at my desk within just 45 minutes with the cannabis.

My search started in a convenience store on the east side of Peterborough.

Inside, I approached a young man I had seen wandering into the shop. He was
about 20, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and had two friends waiting for
him outside.

At first, when I asked him if he knew where I could buy some "puff" a slang
term for cannabis he appeared offended. "Are you saying I have the face of
a drug dealer?" he replied.

I backed off nervously and went back to studying the cold drinks, while he
picked up a litre of orange juice.

He had seemed aggressive and I thought I should leave the shop and try
elsewhere. But then he came back up to me and admitted he did "like to smoke".

I told him I was having a rare day off from work and just wanted to get
high. He told me to meet him outside the shop after I had bought my drink.
Outside the shop he questioned me about where I worked and lived and how
much of the drug I wanted. I lied to hide the fact I was an undercover
reporter. I said: "I have 20 quid on me. I don't know how much I'll get for
that."

"My friend lives over there," he said, pointing randomly across a housing
estate. "He's gonna be able to sort you out."

I walked to the dealer's home with the man, who chatted about the problems
he had on the estate, and spoke with his two friends in a European language
I didn't recognise.

As we approached a deserted, narrow alleyway I suddenly became more anxious
about what I was doing. I could feel my heart racing and I knew I was
struggling to keep up with the lies I had told.

There was also the fear at the back of my mind that they may have been
intending to double-cross me.

I was asked to hand over the UKP 20 note and my new friend went to the drug
dealer's house while I waited, sitting on a kerb with his two friends who
didn't seem keen to chat.

As we waited in the midday sunshine, mothers with pushchairs, groups of
teenagers and elderly people strolled by, oblivious to the deal taking place.

Then another friend of theirs approached. He showed me a lump of cannabis
resin and offered to sell it to me if my other deal didn't work out.

I tried to look grateful, and as we waited we chatted about the ease with
which the drug can be obtained in Peterborough.

He said: "You can easily find anything you want around here. Just ask
people on the street. There's plenty of it around."

After what felt like the longest 15 minutes of my life, I started to
believe that maybe my "friend" wasn't going to come back, when suddenly he
emerged from the dealer's house in the distance.

He handed me a tiny hard brown lump wrapped in cling film. It didn't seem
much for the money I'd paid, but he promised it would get me "stoned".

He smiled, and I felt strangely guilty about lying to him because he gave
me the impression he had gone out of his way to help me.

But then I remembered that what we were doing was still strictly illegal. I
also thought of the families, the pensioners, the children in pushchairs,
that had gone past us on a ordinary day, in an ordinary street, as we
struck our deal.

I found it hard to believe that the very first person I had approached had
been able to sell me the drug so quickly.

It made me sad, very sad indeed.