SKUNK IS DANGEROUS. BUT I STILL BELIEVE IN MY CAMPAIGN TO
DECRIMINALISE CANNABIS

Today's Skunk Is Far Cheaper and More Potent Than My Teenage Joints

I smoked my first joint in the summer of 1968. I was 17 and it was
the summer of love: hot, sexy, the Rolling Stones performing for free
in Hyde Park and the dope was plentiful and benign. It would come in
from the Lebanon, Morocco or Afghanistan and I'd buy it in small
lumps which looked and crumbled just like Oxo cubes.

Sitting on the grass in Hyde Park, armed with a packet of cigarette
papers and the contents of a Benson & Hedges, I rolled my first
joint. The dope made me happy. It seemed such a much better way to
get high than my parents' nightly tipple of sherry or dry martinis.

Everyone I knew in those days smoked pot and most people I know now
have smoked at least once in their lives: some of them now run
corporations and political parties, and there is no evidence that
smoking pot ever hurt them. When I began a campaign to decriminalise
cannabis at The Independent on Sunday in 1997 we were greeted with
derision by the powers that be. Alastair Campbell memorably described
us as a "bunch of old hippies still living in the Sixties".

But our campaign quickly attracted the attention of police officers,
prison wardens and teachers who were by no means just a bunch of old
hippies. Our points were simple: cannabis does less harm than
alcohol; it does not lead people to violence, and no one smokes
themselves to death (as they might drink themselves to death).
Cannabis, not in itself an addictive drug, does not lead people to
hard drugs but the criminalisation of it means that the person who
sells you pot has a vested interest in leading you towards much more
harmful and potentially addictive substances. Locking up young kids
because they smoked dope meant we were making criminals of people who
were, I believe, no more criminal than my sherry-tippling mother.

Our campaigning worked. In time the law was changed and cannabis was
reclassified, making possession barely against the law. I am glad
about this because I do not believe that we can ever contain the drug
trade by making outlaws of the users and by allowing criminal gangs
to control the supply.

But in one respect I have changed my mind. In 1997, I was confident
that cannabis was an almost harmless drug. No drug, even caffeine,
can be said to be entirely without its dangers. But I was talking
about the pot that comes from the sun-filled fields of the Lebanon,
Morocco and Afghanistan. Today's 30-times stronger variety - known as
skunk - has been definitively linked with paranoid schizo-phrenia and
psychosis, mostly among teenage boys who smoke heavily. It is now the
most common form of the drug available on our streets because it can
be grown so easily at home.

You can buy enhanced-strength cannabis seeds over the net. Simply
type in AK-47 or Black Widow and you'll find yourself at a site which
will instantly mail you enough seeds to start a small factory.

Last summer I visited a hydroponic supply store in north London
located behind a piano shop. The piano area was musty and dimly lit,
but once through a small door in the back, I was in something that
was part garden centre, part pharmacy and part chemical repository.

Strange bits of furniture which outwardly resembled portable
wardrobes opened up to reveal a complex system of lights and plastic
tubes which carry fertilisers to the plants. By alternating light
levels and a judicious use of chemicals, you can go from seed to
plant in just eight weeks. The outlay is negligible. A single plant
produces about an ounce of skunk, which costs between UKP100 and
UKP120 on the street.

The dope I used to smoke that we campaigned to have legalised is now
a rarity. Why bother with all the problems of importation if you can
grow it in your bedroom as easily as I grew mustard and cress on
blotting paper when I was a kid at school?

Psychologist Julie Lynn-Evans, who works with teenagers who have
developed paranoia and schizophrenia from smoking dope, says that she
would rather her children became addicted to heroin than skunk. At
least you can completely recover from a heroin problem, whereas skunk
can leave lasting damage. Teenage boys, whose brains mature later
than those of girls, are particularly vulnerable.

Hearing voices is a familiar symptom. While researching a TV
programme on the subject last year, I met a 20-year-old patient of
Julie's and I asked him what the voices said. "Just real absolute
junk... they don't want me to do that to them and I don't want them
doing it to me but..."

He talked about them as though they were real. To him they were,
holding conversations in his head which could go on for weeks,
telling him he was no good, reinforcing messages of paranoia and low
self-esteem.

Julie says that it is the most serious stuff on our streets today:
"Once it has hit the frontal lobes of the developing adolescent, you
just don't know whether they'll recover or not."

But how are people to know just what they are smoking? Teenagers are
always going to smoke cannabis, just as they will always indulge in
under-age drinking. But on today's chaotic streets, where cannabis
doesn't come with a product-information label, it's like entering an
off-licence and asking for a pint of alcohol without knowing whether
you're buying beer or tequila.

The real dangers of skunk do not change my mind about legalisation.
Indeed, I now think full legalisation to be more important, so that
there can be sensible education about the possible dangers. We can
never, ever hope to give out clear, straightforward educational
messages about drugs while they remain illegal. We have no chance of
ever controlling how drugs are sold and who they are sold to.
Illegality drives the drug trade underground, exposing users to drugs
- - not just cannabis - of fluctuating strength and dubious origin,
randomly dangerous in their inconsistencies.

Ending all prohibition on cannabis and all other drugs is not saying
"yes" to drugs. Today's skunk is far cheaper and far more potent than
what I smoked as a 20-year-old. And we are all paying an increasingly
high price.

Unlike the old-fashioned cannabis of my youth, skunk makes people
aggressive: they steal, break into cars and snatch phones. It makes
everyone the victim but the true losers are our sons and daughters
who literally, where skunk is concerned, risk losing their minds and
themselves.