Pubdate: Mon, 12 Aug 2002
Source: Orange County Register, The (CA)
Copyright: 2002 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321
Author: Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

LOOSENING DRUG LAWS GETS MIXED REVIEWS

Some applaud the results of experiment in South London, but others are 
disturbed by drug use out in the open.

LONDON -- At the rundown 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 sweet-smelling 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 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 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 smoke on the street and dealers set up shop 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 announced plans to 
downgrade the criminal penalties for smoking pot in a country where an 
estimated 5 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.

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 most: 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.

Andre-Watson 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.

Indeed, until last 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," 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.
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