I recognised the voice as that of the man who had telephoned me at The Times room at the House of Commons, earlier that week, saying he didn't know me, but wanted to talk about drugs; in an article on this page I had mentioned a programme I was making for BBC Radio Five Live on the subject; he thought I should talk to someone who knew, instead of
just politicians.

Could we talk, with him remaining anonymous? I said he could ring me at my London flat at midnight. He agreed. Awaiting the call I prepared questions, the first being "Why have you rung?" "I sell marijuana." The voice was of a youngish, but not very young, man; the manner that of a reasonably thoughtful, by no means ignorant person. "Are you a dealer?" I asked. "Yeah," he said, though he seemed to bridle at the term.

There was no way - I was beginning to realise - that I could use this on my programme
next month. I suspected that what he wanted to say might be self-incriminatory. This would be an abuse of his trust. But I could abstract a short, publishable account from a longer conversation.

"Who are your customers?" "Professional working people, all of them. It's different to the way we come across in the media."

"What sort of professionals?" "Lawyers, teachers, journ . . ." he stopped himself ". . . people who work in the City. . ."

"Are you dealing full time?" Silence. "Do you have any other job?" "No." He was beginning to sound put out by my line of questioning. Odd, given that he had volunteered the conversation. I sensed his intention had been to give me his opinions about the hypocrisy of politicians, whereas mine was to learn more about the nuts and bolts of his own trade. I persisted. "Do you make a reasonable living?" I asked. "Keeps the wolf from the door. But not as far from the door as I'd like." "Are you as rich as your customers? As a lawyer?" "No." "As a teacher?" "No, nowhere near that league." "You sell only marijuana?" "Yeah."

It's worth interjecting here that from what I have been able to discover, marijuana dealers in Britain are a distinct breed within the species, most of them fairly small-time, many uninvolved in any other kinds of drugs. Their trade is pretty steady and their overall turnover may be levelling off.

I asked him about his suppliers, but he would not answer. I asked about his own profit margin.

"I'm not saying that. There's a certain person with me in the room who I happen to be doing a bit of business with at the moment and I'm not saying that in front of them - know what I mean?"

"What's your relationship with your customers?" "Sociable. More than being a plumber."

"How is contact made?" "Telephone, usually." "So they have your number?" I was surprised. This did not sound like a nail-biting life on the criminal fringe. "Yeah. I just give it." "You deliver?" "Door-to-door." "For cash?" "Depends. There's always the 'pay-you-next-week' ones to watch out for."

I put it to him that many of his countrymen (and, I suspect, my readers) would say the main objection to marijuana is not the drug itself but that it can become the gateway to harder drugs. He seemed incredulous at the suggestion. No more than alcohol, he said. His customers were no more on the slide towards injecting heroin than The Times's distinguished wine critic is on the way to drinking Brasso.
See
"Those who insist on keeping the plant illegal bear a serious degree of moral responsibility for young marijuana users who do go on to use cocaine, heroin, PCP or other genuinely dangerous or addictive drugs."
Alan Bock, of the Orange County Register On the Real Gateway
On my travels through Britain's drugs scene I have found a huge disjunction between a popular fear (honestly felt, I believe) that soft drugs taken for leisure are the first stop on a descent into ruinous addiction, and the commentary and experience of those familiar with drugs.

My telephone caller's customers were not, he insisted, into other drugs besides marijuana, though when pressed he conceded it was possible that some professional people also took cocaine "for recreational use, like at the weekend". "Recreational? Give me an example."

"Do you know any lawyers? Anyone that comes home from a day's work. They need to unwind." I asked how initial contact was made. "Grapevine . . . all sorts of ways."

He did not want to give me "a load of techno-babble", he said. I presume he meant Internet. He "waited to hear", he said.

"People talk of drug pushers. Do you ever push?" "No, not at all." He waited for the pull, he said. "I mean sometimes I'm sitting at home and my feet are up by the fire and I don't want to go anywhere, and my phone rings and I have to go out into the cold. It's a hard life," he said with a chuckle; like being a tradesman, a plumber . . . "Yeah. Frozen pipes."

I suggested that this was not how society viewed dealers. There was sympathy for users, I said, but not dealers, who were regarded as the "scum of the earth". "If there's a personal tragedy, yes, I understand. But then they throw a whole bunch of us, all different, in the same hole and piss on us. But it's supply and demand, isn't it? Nobody who knows me thinks I'm a bad guy or anything like that."

His insistence that he was a pretty straight sort of a guy put me in mind of someone else. "Tony Blair," I said, "in his speech to the Labour Party conference, said parents were scared of dropping their kids off at school, into the arms of drug dealers. Are you aware of this kind of thing happening?"

"I've got a son," he said. "I hope it doesn't."

"Would you sell to kids?"

"I wouldn't dream of it." But then he doesn't sell Ecstasy.
See
Prohibitionist UK Leads Europe In Cannabis Consumption.
More School Children Have Abused Solvents Than In Any Other EU Country.
Following DEAland Policies Gets Them DEAland Results.

I asked him about this. I told him about a woman I visited in Scotland whose son had died from Ecstasy. This was (for me) a harrowing interview. My anonymous caller sounded sincere in his sympathy - and No, he said, he wouldn't like it if anything like that happened to his boy. But his view seemed to be that you would never by law stop kids from getting hold of things they wanted, and it was better to teach them how to handle what they met in life. He thought Ecstasy was less dangerous than much else we encounter, like tobacco. I was struck by how unfamiliar he seemed with the drugs scene beyond that which he inhabited. My mental picture of a "drugs underworld" or dealer community, a shadowy Britain in which knowing people slide between one drug and another, all in touch with what is going on, was fading. I asked him about The Netherlands, and the cannabis cafes in Amsterdam which I had just visited.
See
Two Stories About Holland: UK Police Are Taking British 16-Yearolds
To Visit Dutch "Cannabis Cafes" As A Part Of Drug Education;
And A Dutch City Is "subsidising work experience for the unemployed
in coffee shops selling marijuana."  -- Common Sense -- But Not Without Controversy.

Should we decriminalise here, I asked?

"Depends. What we've got here isn't working. It's making criminals out of people. I mean I don't call myself a bad person but I'm involved in what is regarded as a criminal activity."

So should marijuana be legal? He hesitated. "With one reservation . . . if it was, I'd be out of a job."

In fact, for the relaxed lifestyle he liked best, the present position seemed almost ideal. An enhanced price in return for a modest risk, a degree of opprobrium, and a friendly, intimate business relationship with customers. Could it really be this easy?

I asked him if the virtual amnesty I had encountered in central Manchester was general.

I was careless enough to talk about "the streets" of Manchester. "I don't hang around on the streets." Here was another popular misconception of which I've been disabused during my researches. Politicians like to talk about "our streets" but the drugs sector of our economy has found a far more comfortable home. You won't stop it "on the streets" any more.

You'll have to raid sitting-rooms, search cars and open the mail. What, then, did his customers have to fear?

"Pretty slim."

"Then the police are giving up the fight?" "Fight? I'm not under the impression there's any sort of a fight." "That's perfectly obvious."
See
British Police Show Lenient Attitude Towards Marijuana;
Governor Seeks To Revive New Mexico Medical Marijuana Program NORML Weekly Press Release

Twenty minutes on the telephone to a man I didn't know, and already I was a world away from the last 20 years of politicians' speeches to party conferences. How much of this do they know? I interviewed Jack Straw on Wednesday, but I still haven't the least idea.
(Marijuananews note: Jack Straw is the UK "Home Minister," what the Brits call their Minister of Justice.)