CANNABIS CAFES UK

I have no need for a substance that makes me dopey and silly.

Dopiness and silliness are part of my natural make-up. Why on earth would I
need to smoke cannabis?

That said, I do like a pint, and a few of those make me dopey and silly.

However, alcohol also makes many other people aggressive and argumentative.
Now, I'm trying not to be controversial here, but although I don't partake
myself, I've yet to meet a combative pot- smoker. A snack-hungry one, yes.
But somebody up for a scrap?

No.

Cannabis Cafes UK (BBC Two), a Money Programme special, followed the
fortunes of Jimmy Ward, a Liverpudlian who lives in Bournemouth, a man
desperate to set up his own Dutch-style coffee shop that sells cannabis.

He has been selling dope since he was 14 -- his Dad was a jailbird and
Jimmy quickly became the main breadwinner -- and, given the impending
downgrading of cannabis to a class C drug (which apparently means that it
is not an offence to carry some as long as it is for personal use), Ward
wanted to set up a coffee shop. As an aside, why call them "coffee" shops?

I have always found the disingenuousness of such language is bewildering.

So off Ward went to Haarlem in Holland, where Nol Van Shaik, a rum
character, runs a course for budding drug entrepreneurs. It was hilarious.
Within minutes Ward, and his fellow wannabe hash retailers, were rendered
speechless by the power of the research material.

Apart from an unnamed portly fellow who claimed, in neo Loyd Grossman
style, that one particular dried leaf smelt of lavender and that another
was "rather citrussey" the rest, Jimmy included, were glassy-eyed and giggly.

Van Shaik certainly confounded my rather lazy belief that cannabis smokers
were unlikely to possess the necessary vim and vigour to be successful
businessman. He already owns a chain of coffee shops in Holland and
co-manages the UK's only coffee shop in Stockport (now that's what I call
commuting!). He even has a pithy slogan for his business: "We are not a
winery, we are a weedery." Indeed, our Grossmanesque cannabis proto-tycoon
was rather impressed with Van Shaik and parroting probably the only phrase
he remembered from reading How to be a Dope Millionaire claimed that:
"Nol's way of doing things is an example of global best practice."

Jimmy returned to Bournemouth to his partner and his six kids (another myth
exploded!) thoroughly determined to establish a coffee shop. Now, I know
Bournemouth has become rather trendy recently and is full of clubs and
bars, but it is still essentially rather fusty and old-fashioned -- there
was absolutely no way that he was going to get away with opening a cannabis
cafe. I don't know what he was thinking of; he must have been on drugs . .
. oh, he was.

Still, he gave it a go, and with some help from friends started to convert
an old shed on a trading estate (mmm, nice ambience). Needless to say, the
local media soon got wind of it and he was front page news. The police also
took a dim view and quickly arrested Ward and his cohorts.

But Ward, on release, was bloody but unbowed: "If they don't want me to
open it they better lock me up good and proper." It was all handled with
wry detachment by the programme-makers, who clearly thought Ward was a
little bonkers, but, hey, madness makes good television.