|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
UK: Huffing and puffing Barbara Ellen The Observer Sunday 04 Nov 2001 You know you're getting old when you start questioning why anybody would want to take drugs. What with biological warfare on the horizon, the entire world seems to be undergoing one huge bad trip, so the question begs - how much more 'altered reality' can any of us take? Well, quite a lot apparently. Our newspapers this week resembled a rough draft of a bad play entitled More Drugs Please, We're British. There were calls to review the status of ecstasy, and cannabis laws are to be softened, officially to help sufferers of diseases such as multiple sclerosis. And quite right, too, but we all know it won't stop there. For the unfortunate few, cannabis might be for medicinal purposes, but for others it's just the same old stinking brain-rot it's always been. Which is why people like it. Not me though. The first thing I did when I read these reports was to drop the papers with a disgusted shriek. The hippies were coming. No, the hippies were winning . Of course, not all dopeheads are bad. I have known a few stylish spliffers in my time, not least my friend, a young mother who doesn't drink, so has to do something to stop herself strangling her large and lovely brood. However, for the main part, heavy dope smokers are a breed apart. Worthy, slow moving and droningly superior, simply because their drug of choice happens to 'grow naturally in the ground', and make their clothes smell of decomposing cabbage. They don't fool anybody. Cocaine might bring out the bastard in a person, heroin the liar and the thief, ecstasy the paranoiac and the hugger, but spliff brings out the worst thing of all - the student bore, all mouth, trousers, and no common sense. Bearing that in mind, their efforts to get dope sold openly like alcohol or cigarettes seem ludicrous at best. Drunks might behave appallingly - they might vomit into gutters, and glass each other at closing time, but at least they know the difference between a cab and a spaceship. All this apart, what is increasingly odd is how, whenever anything 'druggy' comes up, the reports are invariably illustrated with a picture of a Young Person toking on a joint. What always fails to get mentioned is that, these days, there's a fair chance the Young Person was passed the spliff by their dad. For, let's face it, hedonism does not belong exclusively to the young these days, they're just the only ones to get called on it. This week, the dean of Cambridge college St Catherine's criticised students for partying too wildly, but, when you think about it, at least these reprobates are genuinely young and therefore traditionally entitled to rave it up. And, whereas before, this behaviour would trail off naturally the older you got, these days, getting older just seems to mean carting your drug 'problem' into middle age, married respectability, and beyond. So, just as its common for parents to have 'problem teens' who want to take up all kinds of unsavoury habits, by now there must be many teenagers out there with 'problem parents' who just won't give it up. There's a sweet, funny side to all this. One friend says he's always catching his dad and his mate smoking spliffs in lieu of the cigarettes they have given up. It's not unusual for my friend to get home and find them sprawled around on John Lewis cushions, giggling and discussing literature in a fragrant fog. Once his dad passed out at a party, and woke up to find the horrified host dragging him across the Axminster by his ankles, because he thought he'd 'overdosed' and didn't want a 'drug death' in his house. This story seems to highlight the growing chasm between the conventional middle-aged, who've left such childish things behind, and their contemporaries, who have no intention of passing up on fun. It also shows that any story about cannabis could just as appropriately be illustrated with a picture of a middle-aged couple, sitting on a sofa, rolling a spliff on top of an old copy of the Radio Times. More than anything else it explains why the laws on cannabis are finally moving forward. Everyone assumes that it is pressure from the new generation which is effecting these changes, but obviously it's pressure from the old. We seem to have a new generation of older, more polite, even rather distinguished occasional-spliffers, who also happen to be voters with status and money. Ergo, cannabis isn't the 'yoof' cautionary tale it used to be, more an Aga saga with the 'munchies'. Saying all that, some of us retain our right to be stubbornly unimpressed by all this herbal huffing and puffing. As a wise man once said to me, if you can't enjoy yourself with booze and fags, you're at the wrong party. I'd go further by saying, you're in the wrong life.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!