The northlondonhippy

Another day, another drug report; but as always with the same, sen­si­ble conclusions.

This time, the authors of the report, the “The Royal Soci­ety for the encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce” — com­monly known as the RSA, spent two years study­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Rather than me explain­ing it to you, why don’t you read about it here, in my favourite broad­sheet news­pa­per, The Guardian.

It’s an informed and con­sid­ered opin­ion that the RSA is offer­ing, one that has been around in one form or another, endorsed by other objec­tive stud­ies and com­pletely ignored by politicians.

Politi­cians are ter­ri­fied of reports like this because they are ter­ri­fied of change. “Change” is a vote-loser, espe­cially when that change, no mat­ter how ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety is mis­un­der­stood by a mis­in­formed public.

Politi­cians have a vested inter­est in keep­ing peo­ple mis­in­formed, espe­cially about drugs. How can they be seen to be com­bat­ing this ter­ri­ble prob­lem, if they haven’t pointed out it’s a prob­lem in the first place?

The sim­ple fact is that count­less num­bers of peo­ple in the UK take drugs every week, some every day, with no notice­able effect on their nor­mal, pro­duc­tive lives, yet they are crim­i­nalised for some­thing that harms no one.

What harms peo­ple are the sit­u­a­tions cre­ated by the pro­hi­bi­tion of drugs.

What harms peo­ple is the igno­rance and mis­un­der­stand­ing that is fos­tered by gov­ern­ments and by the tra­di­tional media.

I’ve smoked cannabis for nearly 26 years and dur­ing that time I’ve either been a gain­fully employed, tax-paying mem­ber of soci­ety or a stu­dent in full time edu­ca­tion. I’m still sharp as tack with the men­tal skills of some­one half my age. I don’t really take any­thing else these days and I hardly if ever drink alco­hol. Should I be a criminal?

Of course not!

Think of all the dosh lost in uncol­lected VAT on all of the weed I’ve smoked over the years! There goes that extra MRI scan­ner for your local hos­pi­tal! There goes an extra cop or two on the street!

It’s a plant for fuck sake! How can you ban nature?

Some of the biggest and most vocal sup­port­ers of a rethink on ille­gal drugs are the police. Yes, the police, the same peo­ple who have to enforce these point­less laws. The cops would much rather be chas­ing down gen­uine crim­i­nals than a bunch of dope­heads for possession!

I’ve spo­ken to cops who have told me they pre­fer to police a hous­ing estate that has a higher per­cent­age of weed smok­ers than drinkers. The smok­ers are much more chilled out, whereas we know what peo­ple who abuse alco­hol are like. If you don’t, just visit any city cen­tre this week­end after 11pm and you’ll receive a les­son you won’t soon forget!

Remem­ber, the police don’t make the laws and it seems like they’re not even con­sulted when they’re best suited to offer guid­ance from real life expe­ri­ence. Lis­ten to the cops, please Mr. Politi­cian man! He doesn’t want to arrest any­one for possession!

What we need is an MP with balls, prefer­ably one to become head of the Home Office. Charles Clark was lean­ing in that direc­tion; so was David Blun­kett, but not John Reid. He doesn’t want to rock the boat; he’s plan­ning a future in politics.

How about David “call me Dave” Cameron? Before he was leader of his party, he posed a ques­tion over whether drugs should be legalised. He didn’t offer or sug­gest an answer, he just sug­gested the ques­tion could or should be asked.

Since then, he hasn’t even come close to this posi­tion and if any­thing he’s backed away from it. Since the rev­e­la­tions of his boy­hood indis­cre­tion with a spliff (shock/horror!), there is even less chance of him keep­ing his mind this open. It’s a pity, I had high (no pun) hopes for him.

Leave it to the leader of the Lib­Dems, Sir Men­zies Camp­bell to be the one voice of rea­son, wel­com­ing the RSA report and endors­ing its find­ings. The Lib­Dems would legalise weed in an instant and we’d have Dutch-style cof­feeshops in every neigh­bour­hood! I wish they would get their act together and get some more support.

Do I think the law is going to change?

Yes, even­tu­ally it will, but not soon enough. I’d like it to change yes­ter­day, or even the day before. If every­one would just see sense and avoid all the knee-jerk reac­tion bull­shit that the sub­ject always brings out, we could change the laws for the ben­e­fit of not just one lone hippy in north Lon­don, but all of society!

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