Europe's antidrug bastion reconsiders

Debate still rages. Conservative newspapers like the largest selling broadsheet, Daily Telegraph, and the No. 2 tabloid, Daily Mail, are strongly against marijuana smoking. Britain's 'drug czar,' ex-policeman Keith Hellawell, also opposes treating marijuana more leniently than other drugs, maintaining that this would make little difference to criminals' currently lucrative situation. In a statement earlier this month, he said: "The only way you would take the whole thing out of the criminal justice system is to actually say we will legalize everything and make it available to everybody."

There are also academics to the left, such as Robin Bunton, of the University of Teesside, who see liberalization as a 'neo-liberal' move that would give market forces sway in an area where the state previously had responsibility for citizens' welfare.

More surprising is the extent to which acceptance and use of soft drugs has apparently spread through various agencies of the government. The chief inspector of prisons. Sir David Ramsbotham, has added his name to those of a number of senior policemen calling for consideration of decriminalization of marijuana.

A recent study shows that within the police force itself, there is growing drug consumption, especially by younger officers taking cannabis and ecstasy. The study's author, David Wilson, professor of criminal justice at the University of Central England, Birmingham, says: "When you consider how many 20-year-olds take drugs, it is not surprising that some of the people who join the police are also drug users."

In the Brixton experiment, which extends through early January, Britain is following a pan-European trend.

The trail toward greater tolerance was blazed by the Dutch, where, since 1976, officially tolerated cafés have served marijuana as well as coffee. Experience in the Netherlands seems to refute the idea of marijuana working as an automatic 'gateway' to harder drugs - Dutch rates of heroin addiction are lower than those in the UK, whose anti-marijuana laws have until now been the stiffest in Western Europe. Survey figures also indicate that only 14 percent of Dutch 15-16 year-olds smoke marijuana, compared to 16 percent of their British counterparts.

The past two years have seen Belgium, Switzerland and Germany all follow the Dutch lead by decriminalizing marijuana sale and consumption to varying extents. French health minister Kouchner added to the movement this month by himself admitting to smoking the drug and stating that he thinks it should be legal in France.

In July, Portugal decriminalized use of all drugs as part of a new public-health strategy. The focus is on treatment and rehabilitation of users, rather than on criminal punishment. Only Swedish and Greek authorities remain at least nominally fixed on the goal of a drug-free society.

One reason for Britain's changing official attitude toward cannabis may be a realization that the drug has become popular across a spectrum of society. Back in Brixton in the mid-1980s, smoking by the neighborhood's large Caribbean minority stoked conflict with a largely white police force, which contributed to urban riots. Last month the 'Big Chill' music festival, 200 miles west of London in Wiltshire, occurred under a haze of marijuana smoke. Most of the thousands who paid £100 ($145) to attend were white professionals.

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