FOR POTHEADS IN BRITAIN, THE JOINT OF THE FUTURE

Cafe Near Manchester Is Ahead of New Law

STOCKPORT, England -- Until the Dutch Experience cafe opened here earlier
this fall, providing marijuana by the bag instead of beer by the pint,
Stockport never loomed particularly large in the greater British imagination.

"I read in the newspaper that the only thing Stockport is famous for is the
hat museum," said Darren Ince, 32, a retail manager, on his way to secure a
joint or two at the cafe recently. "I didn't know we were even famous for
that."

All that changed this fall, when the cafe opened its doors, let the
distinctive smoke waft out and instantly turned this unremarkable suburb of
Manchester into a battleground for Britain's growing pot smokers' rights
movement.

The Dutch Experience, modeled on the pot-purveying coffee shops of
marijuana-friendly Amsterdam, may well prove to be the thin end of the
wedge in Britain, where the government is signaling that it might relax
laws on the use of soft drugs in the name of creating a workable drug policy.

British drug laws are strict, and the police spend an inordinate amount of
time dealing with minor drug offenses, the government says. Sixty-five
percent of the 120,000 drug-related arrests in Britain last year were for
possession of marijuana.

Saying the police should direct their efforts at eradicating hard drugs
like heroin and LSD, Home Secretary David Blunkett last month proposed
downgrading marijuana to a Class C drug, from its current Class B status.
That would make possession of pot no longer an arrestable offense.

But Mr. Blunkett's proposals have not yet taken effect, and law enforcement
officials across the country are not exactly sure what to do in this
interim period.

It is unclear, for instance, what the Stockport police really think of the
Dutch Experience. After raiding it in September on the day it opened, they
seemed to have adopted a live-and-let-smoke policy, generously
acknowledging, they said in a statement, that there is an "ongoing debate
about the medical benefits, or otherwise, of cannabis."

But it appears that the cafe has been attracting too much attention and too
boldly flouting the law, no matter how mellow its activities might seem.

On Tuesday, as the BBC was inside filming the cafe for a program about drug
policy, the police returned, threw everyone out and charged the owner,
Colin Davies, and several others with various drug-related offenses,
including selling marijuana.

"The police in appropriate cases exercise discretion and judgment with
regard to certain offenses of simple possession of cannabis, and each case
is taken on merit," said Superintendent Richard Crawshaw of the Greater
Manchester Police's Stockport division. "However, in the face of overt and
challenging behavior which amounts to intention to break the law, our
stance will be one of enforcement."

It is hard to know how far such enforcement goes. Even as Mr. Davies, one
of Britain's best-known campaigners for legalizing marijuana, remained in
custody overnight, his cafe reopened. The patrons came back, sipping
coffee, rolling joints, discussing nothing and everything.

Despite the occasional police raids, the cannabis cafe, as it is generally
known, has proved highly popular with its neighbors. They applaud its
strict no-alcohol, no-violence policy, saying they much prefer happy,
peaceful druggies to aggressive, unpleasant drunks.

"They always look so pleased, and they're really friendly," said Becky
Lees, who works at the front desk of the Outline health club, just across
the walkway, speaking of the pot smokers at the Dutch Experience.

She does not smoke - "I'm addicted to coffee, not cannabis," she said - but
always welcomes customers who come in from the Dutch Experience, which
sells little in the way of food to vanquish the sudden appetites of its
often ravenous clientele.

"We get a lot of business out of it, because they get the munchies and come
and eat in our cafe," Ms. Lees said.

Eating, yes. But no weightlifting. "We don't let people use the gym if
they've been smoking weed," she said. "It's not a good idea, for safety
reasons, to let people who are stoned use the machines."

Mr. Davies, who uses the profits from recreational patrons at the Dutch
Experience to help pay for pot for medicinal users, says he started smoking
marijuana to quell crippling back pains from the vertebrae he broke after a
fall in 1995.

Shortly afterward, he founded the Medical Marijuana Cooperative, a
mail-order service that discreetly provides pot to people with a variety of
illnesses, from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Mr. Davies, 44, jokingly
calls the cafe the MHS, or the Marijuana Health Service. The National
Health Service, or NHS, runs Britain's system of socialized medicine.

It is not uncommon to see wheelchair users rolling down the path in front
of the cafe, seeking drugs inside. "People in wheelchairs shouldn't have to
pay for their medicine," said Mr. Davies, who hopes to open a chain of
cannabis cafes around Britain. "They should get it free, and that's what
we're doing."

At the Stockport Tourist Information center, employees say the Dutch
Experience has become one of the most asked-about places in town.

A spokeswoman, who in keeping with tourist office policy insisted that her
name not be used, declined to say whether she, or any other council
employees, had patronized the cafe themselves. "It's certainly put us on
the map," she said, "though whether that's a positive thing or a negative
thing I couldn't say."