Carshalton and Wallington MP Tom Brake has been leading a tenacious and spirited campaign against Your High, a “head shop” in Wallington which sells pipes, bongs, rolling papers and all the various paraphernalia used to consume cannabis. Mr Brake is unhappy that there are currently no legal restrictions on selling such materials and has been working hard to encourage the relevant authorities to make some. His campaign has the support of many local residents. According to Mr Brake’s own account, over 100 people signed a petition to put a stop this sort of thing on just one Saturday morning while others were encouraged by local nominal liberals to gather to protest outside this entirely legal private business.
Cannabis is pretty unpleasant stuff. Some people it makes sad, others dull, and we are told that still others are made quite mad by it. I can’t recommend it. The law against cannabis itself, while probably unnecessary and ineffective, is at least no more ridiculous than many of the other arbitrary limitations on personal freedom which we endure.
Yet to seek a ban on the sale of “cannabis paraphernalia” is a whole different kettle of fish. I employ quotation marks here because the devices and supplies to which I refer are neither necessary for consuming cannabis nor exclusively useful for doing so. The most common adjuncts to cannabis consumption (so I’m told) are tobacco and rolling papers, both of which are freely and mostly uncontroversially sold by every respectable newsagent and supermarket in the country. Tesco supply more dope fiends in an hour than Your High’s proprietor could ever hope to in a year in his most brain-addled and resinous pipe dream. Yet never do we hear of campaigns against Tesco’s lucrative dope-enabling business or enjoy the opportunity to sign righteous petitions against it.
Petitions are curious things. While they are a useful tool for campaigners (and having organised a few of my own) I’m certain that the things themselves have absolutely no meaning. It would be a straightforward matter to gain a substantial number of signatures in Wallington High Street of a morning demanding Mr Brake’s immediate removal from office, or conversely pledges of support for his continuation. A petition to call for people to be allowed to smoke cannabis in the privacy of their own homes and be left entirely alone could easily attract significant support in a short period of time, there being roughly as many Brits who believe other people’s business is their own as those that don’t. The numbers count for little either way.
So it’s pretty clear that the real problem with Your High isn’t that it helps people to smoke cannabis. In as much as it may do, it’s a mere amateur against the real pros in the big retailers and tobacco companies.
Perhaps the problem is that it encourages people to smoke cannabis that might otherwise not have contemplated the matter. Is this small shop with its jaunty green leaf insignia a siren call to the suburban stoner lifestyle? Might the doughty and otherwise blameless citizens of Wallington on passing its portals one time too many be tipped into packing in their sober habits for something a little more turned on, tuned in and dropped out? Are children particularly susceptible to its dubious countercultural charms?
Sadly, neither you nor I nor Mr Brake have any idea. Perhaps a survey would illuminate matters.
Q. Does this shop which we’re standing outside, “Your High”, make you:
- Much more likely to use cannabis?
- Somewhat more likely to use cannabis?
- Neither more nor less likely to use cannabis?
- Somewhat less likely to use cannabis?
- Much less likely to use cannabis?
If the full weight of the law is to be brought upon people running “head shops”, it seems only proper to attempt to define and where possible quantify the harm they supposedly cause. Where children are suspected to be potential or actual victims, suitable similar research could be conducted in nearby schools, where apparently 95% of parents are in favour of action against Your High. If there is a case that these shops lure the vulnerable and unwary into the clutches of the pungent leaf, it has yet to be made.
The real problem with Your High isn’t that it helps people to smoke cannabis or encourages them to do so. The problem is that it’s tacky, tawdry, provocative and calculatedly effective in pricking suburban sensibilities. It’s out of place and in highly bad taste, like farting loudly and proudly in church. Similar shops in more urban areas operate without a hint of fuss, their neighbours being far too busy earning themselves a living while often dodging the more crazed and deadly effects of the sharper end of the illicit drugs trade. Your High raises hackles not because it has made Wallington a magnet for drug-fuelled anarchy (it hasn’t). Despite the worst fears and predictions, there hasn’t been an outbreak of reefer madness among the local youth. I doubt many local people are even particularly bothered that some of their neighbours smoke cannabis in a private and entirely innocuous way. They just don’t want it in their faces and would rather use the law to punish those who revolt them than endure such an unpleasant sight. The longer this shop remains, the weaker the case for outlawing it appears.
As all we hold dear looks increasingly precarious in the face of seemingly impending economic and environmental collapse, it’s a great pity that our political representatives have chosen to spend so much of their time railing against minor offences to the spirit rather than the major threats to our lives, limbs and property. If there’s one thing I find in particularly bad taste it’s laws against bad taste.