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Easing of Marijuana Laws Angers Many Britons August 12, 2002 By SARAH LYALL LONDON, Aug. 9 - At the run-down Stockwell housing project here, the potheads were complaining about the smackheads. "Right down there, I saw a guy injecting a girl into her neck," said James Haind, 28, his indignation wrapped in a cloud of smoke. Hanging out recently at the project's skateboard park with his friends, their skateboards and their stashes of weed, he offered himself as living proof that marijuana does not lead inevitably to harder drugs. "A sensible, stable person will not turn to heroin," declared Mr. Haind, an out-of-work sign painter who estimates that he has been getting high for half his life. "That's for the more stupid people." That is just the message the government seems to have sent to Brixton, in South London, where a six-month experiment in loosening the national drug laws has just ended. The program pleased Brixton's smokers, and even the police. But it left many residents feeling that their neighborhood had turned into an open-air drug bazaar, where teenagers brazenly smoke on the street and dealers set up shop next to fruit sellers in the market, hissing "skunk weed, skunk weed" at pedestrians. "People started smoking openly, whereas before they'd have their little hideaways," said the Rev. Chris Andre-Watson, pastor of the Brixton Baptist Church, who runs a mentoring program for teenage boys and says the drug experiment has left many youths "zombied out." Partly as a result of Brixton's trial, the government recently announced plans to downgrade the criminal penalties for smoking pot in a country where an estimated five million people are habitual users. Although the plan is an acknowledgment that drugs like heroin and cocaine are far more harmful than marijuana, the mixed reviews here raise a host of questions about loosening marijuana laws. Under the experiment, people caught smoking marijuana in Lambeth Borough, which includes Brixton, got off with warnings rather than arrests, leaving the police free to pursue more serious criminals. The police said it led to an overall decline in crime and saved much police time. Mr. Haind and his smoking companions were thrilled. "For me and my friends, it's all good - we don't have to worry about getting hassled if we want to smoke a little herb," said David Reading, 21, a would-be record producer just out of college. But others were angry at the way pot-selling and smoking had been thrust so clearly in the open. Ros Griffiths, director of the Employment Cafe, a job center and Internet coffee shop, said she was unsure what had offended her more: when a dealer grabbed a loudspeaker at the weekly farmer's market and yelled, "Come and get your weed here!" - or when a teenager sauntered through her door and sought advice on setting up a cannabis cafe. "By the time I finished with him, he was suddenly put off the idea," she recalled grimly. Ms. Griffiths said she resented the way the drug experiment transformed Brixton, long the center of London's black population and now an increasingly vibrant multiracial community, into a magnet for drug use. "Suddenly people were thinking, `Yeah - let's go to Brixton and smoke cannabis!' " she said. Mr. Andre-Watson was waiting at a bus stop recently when a pair of teenagers lit up in front of an elderly lady. "I said, `Do you know that it's actually still illegal?' " the pastor recalled. "And they said, `Everbody's doing it, and no one's doing anything about it.' " He and other residents complained so bitterly about drug dealing that after negative newspaper stories, the police finally sent officers this month to clear the streets. But how long the stepped-up presence will persist is anybody's guess. When London as a whole relaxes its marijuana policy under the new legislation, people in Brixton are predicting that the open-air dealers will be back, at the busy subway station and up and down Coldharbour Lane. Indeed, until this week, there were dozens of opportunities to buy pot on a Brixton street crowded with families and stores. Few people were under the illusion that marijuana was the sole product being offered. "It's not like people stand on one side of the street dealing cannabis, and on the other side they're dealing crack and cocaine," Ms. Griffiths said. "It's the same person." Trying to address that problem, the new drug law, whose passage by the Labor-controlled Parliament is a sure thing in the next legislative session, provides for increased penalties for pushing drugs, particularly hard drugs. That hardly affects the youths doing daredevil stunts on skateboards and BMX bikes at the skateboard park, who say they mostly grow their own pot anyway. "We really don't see it as a drug at all," said Mr. Reading, helping himself to a fat joint filled with skunk, a souped-up form of marijuana. The drug helps him find his skateboarding groove, he said. "It's not a dis - what's the word? - well, I still have my balance," he explained. "Although sometimes days go by - and before you know it a week's gone by, and you haven't done anything you're supposed to do, like get a job." Ashley Finnegan, 30, a nursery school teacher who lives in the Stockwell housing project, said she far prefers the stoned guys at the skating park to the alcoholics and addicts along her hallway. She grows pot at home and smokes a joint or two a night, although never in front of her 4-year-old son, she said. "Alcoholics in this area are far more likely to be abusive, to be begging on the streets," she said. "If anything, pot mellows people down." Mr. Haind, the sign painter, agreed. "There'd be a full-scale riot here if we weren't all stoned," he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/12/international/europe/12BRIX.html?ex=1030156044&ei=1&en=482790f3c63489d2 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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