BUT THERE'S ONLY ONE PROBLEM. I HATE DOPE

Euan Ferguson Went Out Yesterday To Test The New Liberal Attitude To
Cannabis. Buying It Was Easy, But Smoking It Made Him Sick

Spare a thought, as Britain finally goes cannabis-friendly, and smoking
spliffs in the street becomes about as offensive as failing to plump up
your pillows properly in the morning, for a small but select band of
Britons - those who want to do dope but can't.

We do want to, truly. We want to do something that annoys the police and,
obviously, Tony Blair. Intellectually, we can see clear rationale in all
the 'pro' arguments and we want to like it, and feel an affinity with the
nice people we know who smoke it. So we've gone on the marches, we've
written the articles, we've signed the petitions. There's only one problem:
we actually hate the stuff.

I tried again yesterday, on the orders of various news executives who
thought it would be amusing to send a confessed dopophobe into the streets
to buy some, get stoned and then write about it. Suspecting (rightly, as it
turned out) that the experience would actually be as amusing as rectal
polyps, I set out anyway along the canal for London's Camden Town, using
the time to consider why it had never worked for me - and, presumably, for
the many others who are in no ways opposed to it but just don't quite get
it, or just prefer beer.

It's not just the fact that it will, often, simply make boring people more
boring. It's not just the paraphernalia that comes with it, all the
cod-surreptitious talk of stash and roach-clips and bongs and black and
gold; or the things it makes people do with music, the head-nodding stuff
and the belief among jazz soloists that it confers the right to witter on
for half an hour longer than is acceptable to even an audience of stoned
jazz soloists.

It's all these things of course, but it's still not a bad thing, and I've
often thought places like Glasgow would be far better off if they lumped
tons of the stuff into the water supply.

My problem is just that it makes me feel horrible. Sick, usually. Plus, the
four times I have tried it in my adult life there were two significant side
effects. Twice it acted as a powerful aphrodisiac, twice as a quite
exuberantly effective laxative. Two of these times I was home alone, and
two times I was out in the company of a lady: guess which times were which.

But I tried again, yesterday. The lock at Camden was heaving in the
lunchtime sun: tourists heavy with confusion and hawkers heavy with beads,
and bright narrow boats slipping through a sea of rasta hats; and a
pervasive scent of patchouli. I had worried slightly that the place might
be filled with similarly po-faced hacks trying to buy - but I seemed to be
on my own.

It took about five minutes to find someone on the canalside who looked like
they might have enjoyed a nodding acquaintance with the psychotropic
qualities of cannabis, and as I wandered past I caught the distinctive
whiff, so delightfully familiar to Cafe owners entering their premises in
Amsterdam and mothers entering teenage bedrooms in Lewes. I caught his eye
and wandered over, mindful of strict instructions to ask for some 'blow',
and not say 'can you roll me a dope' or 'hit me with the bong, daddy-o' or
some such. He winked, and we moved away, under the bridge, away from the
security guards who work at Camden Market; my man (as we dopeheads say),
who introduced himself as Solomon, explained that even though the police
turn a blind eye, these wannabe-police are more vigilant than ever.

Twenty pounds for four grammes was the going price, and I handed over the
notes and received a handful of grass in a crumpled clutch of newspaper. I
then realised, with something approaching shame, that I had never actually
rolled a spliff; surely that's one of those 50 things, according to all the
men's mags, that you have to have done by the age of (at the very most) 30
before you can call yourself a man, like glassing someone and sleeping with
two sisters at once. With the help of Solomon, I managed to roll the worst
joint in the world, licking my B&H down the side to soak the paper, pouring
the tobacco out on to the Rizla, adding a good sprinkling of the less spiky
bits of grass and then rolling the mass together with a clumsy haste born
of a growing skittish wind and the frankly insolent gazes of tourists.

My first mistake was trying to please the photographer by taking big long
draws so he could see it burning and smoking, and doing this again and
again, quickly.There was, in fact, a nice little hit at one point; I
realised I could feel an effect, of sorts, and it wasn't wholly
unpleasurable. I smiled, happy to be standing in the autumn sunshine,
pleased with my success, delighted at the fact that I seemed to be
side-effect free in that I had not yet had the urge, when looking at
passing women, to either ravage or defecate upon them.

And as I wandered through the streets of Camden itself, for the first five
minutes, things were nice. And then it got a wee bit nasty. Not awful, just
feeling sicky, tired, a bit nauseous, and slightly out of control. Friends
would be outraged at any implication that I spend huge amounts of my life
in control, but I know pretty much what beer does, and when it does it, and
how likely you are to be forgiven afterwards; this was different, and, I
remembered from before, slightly scary. And I'll just be grateful that the
Government has had the sense to change the law so that people who can
enjoy, do; and I'll remain a little bit jealous, even if they can tend to
be a little holier-than-thou, and annoying in the way they believe there is
something unassailably good, and honest, and witty, and deep, and right,
about what they have just said.

Or written.