Grow your own – and help fight the war on terror

Poor Jamie Waylett. Dragged across the newspapers and vilified for doing precisely the right thing. Grow your own – it’s a great idea. You know what you’re getting (you can monitor the strength) – you cut out the middleman (avoid the gangs) and it’s green as well. I would have considered doing the same if I still smoked cannabis as much as I did in America in the seventies. Back then it was very simple. You avoided Mexican because the US sprayed it with paraquat and usually opted for Colombian instead. (I gave up cannabis when I returned to  Britain where I encountered the habit of cutting with tobacco, a drug I have always avoided since I have asthma.)

I’ll say it again: grow your own – brilliant. We’ve got a great crop of potatoes in our garden this year – new and old – and the strawberries are magnificent – much better than from any shop. The main thing then is quality control – no different with cannabis. Waylett should be applauded for exactly the right kind of green initiative – and it is precisely of course why people grow their own cannabis for medicinal purposes.  

Why can’t we ever seem to grow up about drugs? Let me say this: I hate middle England’s constant undying tautological refrain of ‘drink and drugs’. Drink is a drug. They are all drugs – legal, illegal, prescribed, over the counter.  Of course no drug is safe – and every drug is different.

In the UK it all started with the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971). As everyone on the ground at the time will tell you (for instance vicars in the East End) there was a negligible problem before that legislation and an accelerating one afterwards. And even if there had been a big problem before this date then it has always been best to treat those who have misused drugs sympathetically without them becoming frightened of prosecution and going to ground – which of course is exactly what has happened in the last 30 to 40 years.

The law is an ass over drugs – and it is an ass internationally of course. And incidentally is the war in Afghanistan a war on terror or is it really a war on drugs (opium being arguably Afghanistan’s greatest resource)? And if so does this mean that the war on drugs in Afghanistan (and elsewhere – such as Colombia) is actually a war on terror and that to a major extent they have become so entwined as to become one and the same thing?  

The newspapers would have us believe that the public feels great terror at the idea of growing your own. In fact there is nothing terrible about it – the government should be encouraging it.