I’m going to Denver.

Colorado just this week legalised the use of cannabis for ‘recreational use’. Like 4 x 4 driving in the mountains; you can now do it stoned out of your box. Or deep-sea diving, marlin fishing, sailing or skiing. All recreations now to be greatly enhanced by smoking dope. Though good luck finding marlin in Colorado.

Much easier just to roll yourself a big one and turn on the National Geographic channel on tv. Marlin or not, that’ll take a good three hours of your life and you’ll have forgotten about marlin by the time the first advert for Doritos or Burger King comes on.

The legalisation of dope has always been an interesting question. Unless you’re Peter Hitchens who truly believes in his heart of hearts that the first puff of your first joint will take you straight to the psychosis ward, never to recover.

For normal people though, the ‘odd toke’ is just part of growing up, like your first time drunk as a skunk, your first fumbled sexual adventures, your first two marriages or your first 3-some with a nun and a donkey.

Bill Clinton did it (though ‘didn’t inhale’; like he didn’t ‘have sex’ with Monica Lewinsky), Tony Blair must have done it a lot to have ended up with Cherie, Ed Milliband, David Cameron, Prince Philip, The Archbishop of Canterbury, all stoners in their day.

And why not. It wasn’t so long ago that the demon drink was an illegal substance in America. Didn’t stop anyone drinking the stuff, just made the stuff they did drink far more likely to do everlasting harm. Instead of Smirnoff they’d drink ‘moonshine’ made by JFK’s grandaddy out of elderberries, used engine oil and distilled cow-dung.

So at least legalising it means having some control of the quality. Though not necessarily the strength.

The dope we smoked in the 70s and 80s had a ‘thc’ value of about 4. The shit they smoke today is up in the 30s. Which is a bit like comparing a green pepper with a habanjero chilli.

But heh; kids are going to smoke it anyway, and plenty of adults too. If you ‘need’ to get off your face then the only other option is hitting the bottle, which generally leads to hitting people with the bottle afterwards, throwing up, smashing up the town centre, fighting, being abusive, aggressive and a fucking nuisance all round, plus becoming an alcoholic and ruining your liver.

Whereas no proper stoner ever smashed up the centre of Harlow on a friday night. In fact they didn’t do anything more than stare at the walls, get really, really REALLY into some really really bad music and empty the fridge and larder.

So I vote a big ‘yes’. Even though it was not an election and I’ve never even been to Colorado so wouldn’t have had the vote if it had been.

Happy Saturday, maaaaan…

A xxxx