JOSPIN ATTACKED FOR SAYING CANNABIS USE IS LESS DANGEROUS THAN DRINK-DRIVING

The French Prime Minister and presidential election front-runner, Lionel
Jospin, incurred the fury of right-wing opponents yesterday by declaring
that smoking a joint at home was less dangerous than drinking and driving.

Mr Jospin repeated his refusal to bow to pressure from some Socialist and
Green allies for the decriminalisation of cannabis. He said relaxing the
laws on soft drugs would "give the wrong signal to young people".

But the Socialist Prime Minister told the French news agency Agence France
Presse, in an interview by fax, that virulent critics of cannabis should
remember that both drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco could be more
life-threatening.

"Smoking a joint at home is certainly less dangerous than drinking before
you drive, both for yourself and for other people," he said. If he was
elected President, he said, he would oppose any change in the French laws
against cannabis possession, which are among the most draconian in Europe,
but he said he would push for the laws to be enforced "in an intelligent way".

At a slack moment in the presidential election campaign, Mr Jospin's
opponents pounced on his words with synthetic fury, attempting to portray
him as a man who would be soft on drugs, or at least as someone who wanted
to suck up to the pro-cannabis lobby.

The second charge - that Mr Jospin wanted to appeal to young people,
without "inhaling" the pro-cannabis argument - may not be far wide of the
mark. As some critics pointed out, Mr Jospin's comments could easily be
reversed along the lines that it is more dangerous to drive after smoking a
joint than to take a drink at home.

A series of opinion polls published yesterday and on Monday night suggest
that, after stumbling in the past couple of weeks, Mr Jospin has regained
the initiative in the campaign for the two-round election on 21 April and 5
May.

After being widely criticised two weeks ago, including from within his own
camp, for making personal attacks on his main opponent, President Jacques
Chirac - who he described as "worn out" and "old" - Mr Jospin lost his
narrow lead in the polls. Two of the three polls published this week
suggest that the Prime Minister now leads the President once again in
second-round voting intentions, by 52 to 48 per cent and 51 to 49 per cent.
The third poll puts the two men at 50-50.