Pubdate: Wed,  5 Apr 2000
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2000 Telegraph Group Limited
Contact:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Alice Thomson

WHAT'S THE BEEF ABOUT SELLING CANNABIS?

HERE used to be three butchers in the village of Silverton, Devon. Now 
there is only one, run by Mike, who supplements his income by making pork 
pies and pasties. The announcement yesterday by the Food Standards Agency 
that butchers are to be subjected to even harsher licensing regulations, 
costing UKP100 a year, means that Mike will have to sell another 500 
pasties to break even.

I know how hard Mike works. I've watched him expertly cut up a cow and, 
after two hours, I fainted. He has already been forced to sell his wooden 
butcher's block, take his beef off the bone, change to metrification and go 
on endless hygiene courses. But he admits that he has it easy compared to 
the abattoir, which is facing closure as a result of red tape, or the 
farmer next door, who earned UKP4,000 last year.

Farmers are committing suicide; abattoirs, as the Prince of Wales pointed 
out this week, are being driven out of business; and consumers are being 
forced to buy their meat suction-packed from supermarkets that import 
shepherd's pies from Thailand.

What can we do about it? The answer may lie in our poll on the legalisation 
of cannabis. Of nearly 4,000 calls received by this newspaper on the wicked 
weed, 61 per cent wanted it legalised for a trial period.

Our letters page is overrun with readers advocating experimenting with 
dope. The main problem, as practical Daily Telegraph readers point out, is 
how to manufacture and distribute it.

To import the cannabis would be illegal, and buying from drugs barons would 
defeat the point. There have been suggestions that we could have a 
nationalised cannabis industry, with profits going to the NHS. But that 
would be like insisting we drank only Blair's bitter or Tony's chablis. A 
black market in alternative beverages would soon grow up.

Richard Branson and Anita Roddick have refused to contemplate Virgin dope 
or Body Shop hemp. So who should gain from this potential UKP2 billion 
market? The answer is obvious: farmers, abattoirs and butchers.

FARMERS could be given EU money to set up the infrastructure to grow 
Cannabis sativa. After all, the Greeks get subsidies for growing tobacco, 
and it is not a crop that takes a great deal of intensive farming, unlike 
organic vegetables.

Connoisseurs would soon tell the difference between Devon dope and 
Scunthorpe spliff. Abattoirs could process it. They already have to comply 
with some of the toughest hygiene standards of any industry. Officials 
would do spot checks to make sure the cannabis was not adulterated by dried 
parsley or worse.

The 12,000 butchers in Britain would be the only ones licensed to sell 
cannabis to anyone aged 18 or over. Butchers are the ideal middlemen: they 
tend to be trustworthy, large types with short back-and-sides and pink 
faces. And they are already used to a raft of regulations. When the local 
health authority official came round, he could have the power to revoke any 
butcher's licence if he thought that cannabis was being pushed to children.

It might even encourage people to eat more meat. It is unlikely that the 
butcher would ask old Agnes: "Would you like a joint with your joint of 
lamb?", but 18-year-olds might be tempted to buy a few sausages for 
late-night munchies after a spliff.

The 25 per cent of young people who already admit to using dope would no 
longer have to come into contact with pushers, who will at best rip them 
off and at worst drag them into a dangerous underworld. The price of a 
spliff would probably be no more than a pork chop, so there would be no 
need to steal a car radio to pay for it. And cannabis would seem less 
exotic to children if they saw it being sold between the brisket and the 
offal. Only vegetarian smokers might complain: they'd have to hold their noses.

The NFU should take up the idea. I would rather we helped farmers, butchers 
and abattoirs than organised crime, the Government or large tobacco 
manufacturers. I'd always choose a glass of champagne or whisky over 
cannabis, but I would take a toke if it saved British beef.
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