A POLICEMAN once told me that he'd be doing more good for society if he could arrest people for carrying Swiss Army knives or a crate of Special Brew rather than cannabis. The first is a potentially lethal weapon in the wrong hands. Let lads drink too much of the second and you end up with nasty fights in pub car parks and football grounds. But cannabis wasn't lethal, no matter who carried it. Users were docile, not violent. It was ironic, he thought, that any crime connected with cannabis - turf wars among dealers, mainly - stemmed solely from its status as an illegal, Category B drug. [continues 379 words]
FROM her cockroach-infested prison cell in Goa, Alexia Stewart can't see the Western tourists who flock to Fort Aguada in Goa, one of the coastal states of India. But they're up there, strolling the 17th-century ramparts, gazing at the white beaches, congratulating themselves on finding palm-fringed paradise just 11 hours by package flight from Gatwick Airport. Under their feet, in the squalid, fetid jail built beneath the Fort, Alexia is living in hellish conditions. The 28-year-old daughter of an Oxford don is serving a 10-year jail sentence for possessing 165g of cannabis. She insists the drugs were planted by corrupt local police. Her father Philip, who teaches human sciences, says the case was based on "shoddy evidence". He has flown to Goa in the latest stage of a battle to free Alexia and her boyfriend Gary Carter from jail. Their appeal against conviction began yesterday. Given the tortuous Indian legal system, a quick outcome looks unlikely. [continues 1042 words]
