HIGH HOPES AT THE CANNABIS CAFE

BOB MARLEY'S voice blares from the speakers and the air is thick with
marijuana smoke as a teenager called Dibbz lights up another joint.

The regular customers at The Dutch Experience, Britain's first cannabis
cafe, are celebrating David Blunkett's move to decriminalise cannabis with
a toke of home-grown "super skunk".

Few believe they are about to be embraced by "straight society", but most
are convinced that it is a step towards the kind of social acceptance they
have been campaigning for.

The smokers, an ill-assorted bunch who include ageing MS sufferers, younger
professionals, a few teenage drifters, even a man in a suit and tie, hope
it will put an end to the police raids that have punctuated the cafe's
brief history. It was opened in September last year by Colin Davies, 45, a
long-term sufferer of back pain and founder of the Medical Marijuana
Co-operative, as part of a campaign to make marijuana available for
therapeutic use to ease the pain of arthritis and MS.

The cafe, tucked away in an unfashionable arcade several hundred yards from
the main shopping centre in Stockport, was raided by police on its opening
day. Posters on the cafe windows cry: "Free the Weed 4 Those in Need!"
Altogether, Greater Manchester Police have brought charges against 29 cafe
staff and customers, including several resulting from demonstrations. These
days the only items sold over the counter are coffee and sweet snacks. Jeff
Ditchfield, who plans to set up his own cannabis cafe, Beggar's Belief, in
Rhyl, said the cafe was being run according to the rules laid down by its
founder; no under-18s, no alcohol and no drugs other than cannabis. Asked
whether cannabis could be bought or sold on the premises, he replied: "I
don't see any, do you?" Peter, 38, a project manager and Norwegian national
who lives in Salford, has taken time off work to pop into the cafe. "How
could I not, with all the good news coming from Blunkett?" he said. "It is
obviously a step in the right direction although, of course, not enough."

He talks passionately and articulately for full legalisation as an
alternative way to relax other than alcohol. Legal cannabis cafes would
take the business away from dealers, who have a vested interest in pushing
heavier drugs, he says.

Smokers or "stoners" are functioning people, he says, often at the higher
end of the social spectrum. One cannabis smoker, aged 40, with long dark
hair, is rolling a one-leaf joint with tobacco and super skunk. He has
rheumatoid arthritis and chooses cannabis above other painkilling drugs.

"It is a positive move," he says of Mr Blunkett's initiative. "At least it
is a start after such a long period of absolute ignorance. This is a plus,
plus, plus for the smoking community."

The cafe's neighbours report few problems spilling on to the streets.
Norman Collins, 45, who runs Heaven Hairdressing next door, said he had
seen no evidence of drug dealing or drug abuse in the vicinity. "If
anything, it has novelty value for my clients," he said.

Staff who run a soup kitchen in the crypt of St Peter's Church near by say
they have never had any problems in the graveyard, and certainly no
evidence of needles.

Greater Manchester Police insist they had to act given the provocative and
very public nature of the cafe's operation. "We simply could not ignore
it," one officer said.