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Perhaps I ought to begin by admitting that I'm a complete hypocrite. I'm writing an anti-marijuana piece, and yet I've smoked dope in the past and, given my lack of willpower, I'll probably do so again. Soon. There, I said it. I can now no longer run for president, become a Supreme Court Justice, or join the CIA.

I think the fact that I am now excluded from public life is perfectly just. I have no desire to be governed by people who spend the small hours of Sunday morning loitering around Dupont Circle, looking for dealers. Clinton eats enough cheese puffs as it is. Imagine how out of shape he'd be if he had to contend with regular attacks of the munchies. I generally feel more comfortable in the knowledge that the Supreme Court Justices do not smoke hash pipes when weighing the constitutionality of a lower court's decision.

Admittedly, if this rule were strictly enforced, half the people in public life would have to resign (alright then, a quarter). But hypocrisy is surely preferable to legalizing the devil weed. There has been a concerted effort recently by various old hippies to place this issue back on the agenda, prompted by the successful passage of Proposition 215 in California last November. Thanks to the efforts of men like Dennis Peron, a convicted dope dealer and self-confessed Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers addict, it is now legal to smoke marijuana in the state of California with the approval or recommendation of a doctor.

Don't be fooled by the pretense that California's "Medical Marijuana Initiative" is about helping the sick. At one time or another, morphine, laudanum, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol and LSD have all been touted as medicine. Earlier this year, a reporter for The New Republic was present at the opening of the San Francisco's Cannabis Cultivators Club, Dennis Peron's "medical marijuana" clinic. She discovered that the conditions which California doctors can now legitimately prescribe pot for include AIDS, cancer, epilepsy, sciatica, "eye problems," insomnia, anxiety, depression, "stress management," headaches, impotence, "writers cramp" and "recovering lost memories."

Battling terminal liver cancer? Fire up a doobie. Facing an outbreak of KS lessions? Take a bong hit. To quote Peron, "I believe 90 percent to 100 percent of marijuana use is medical."

As a recovering reefer addict, I must confess to being a member of that tiny minority for whom marijuana use was not medical. Insomnia, anxiety, depression, stress, headaches? It certainly gave me all of those. As for recovering lost memories...sorry, what was that again? I wont go as far as saying it actively damaged my health, but it completely decimated my record collection. I mean that literally. About six months after discovering the dreaded weed, I traded in my entire collection of Beatles LPs for the soundtrack album of The Harder They Come. (OK, it's not a bad album, but it was still a poor trade.)

It didn't do much for my personal hygiene either. Have you ever come within ten feet of a bicycle messenger? I smelt like that. Being English, my teeth aren't my best feature, but not bothering to clean them didn't help, particularly after consuming two bags of fish and chips, three Mars Bars and a bottle of Lucazade. In The New Republic article, the teeth of the reefer addicts loitering around the San Francisco dope clinic are described as "brown and rotted with smoke, the color of dead flowers, and covered by a slimy film." Dennis Peron shouldn't have been handing out marijuana. He should have been handing out Scope.

My sense of humor suffered even more than my teeth. As a pre-teen, I had remarkably sophisticated taste in comedy and patiently worked my way through the entire ouvre of such comic geniuses as Laurel and Hardy and Abbot and Costello. But the moment I became a dope fiend, I thought the most hilarious thing on television was Starsky and Hutch, followed closely by the racing results.

When you're hanging out with your friends doing bong hits, you think you're the funniest guys in the world, but try hanging out with a bunch of stoners when you're straight and see how funny they are then. Quoting entire scenes from Withnail and I may be funny once, perhaps even twice, but a dozen times? It's as though they've retreated back into the world of childhood where, to quote Freud, we had no need of humor to make us feel happy.

The fact is, smoking dope makes you lethargic and apathetic. It undermines your resolve to take exercise, such as standing up when you pee. It saps all your ambition, unless you count getting to the end of Super Mario Bros 3. The apartments of reefer addicts are characterised by squalor and neglect. Things that should be growing are dead and things that should be dead are growing. Just look in the refrigerator.

One of the most common arguments for legalizing cannabis is that alcohol isn't against the law so why should pot be? After all, dope's comparatively harmless next to booze. Quite apart from the damage it does to your liver, it can also result in the death of innocent people, such as the victims of drunken driving. The only thing a pot head is likely to murder after a night of heavy partying is a tub of Cherry Garcia.

There are several things wrong with this argument. For one thing, it assumes that alcohol and marijuana are mutually exclusive. "Some people drink, I get a buzz off this," the red-eyed dope fiend will tell you if you try to engage him in a debate between puffs. But isn't that a can of Red Stripe in your other hand, pal? Given a choice between being driven home by Keith Richards and Senator Edward Kennedy, I'll take my chances with Teddy.

Even if we confine ourselves to liver damage the argument is still weak since it depends on ranking physical health above mental agility. Alchohol may destroy one of your vital organs but it doesn't make you think Stonehenge is evidence of extra-terrestial life. It may make you maudlin, violent and depressed but it doesn't turn your brain to guacemole. Booze has killed-off some of the greatest writers of this century--Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Lowry--but it didn't prevent them from creating The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and the Sea, and Under the Volcano. The only literature I can imagine to have been inspired by cannabis is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh.

A more utilitarian argument is that legalizing pot would reduce crime. But if you legalize a widespread form of criminal activity of course it will reduce crime. Okay, it would lessen the contact of otherwise law-abiding citizens with the criminal underclass, but is that really a net social gain? I'd rather tolerate a few shady characters on street corners whispering "smoke" to the occasional passer-by, than witness an urban epidemic of Starbucks-like stores selling every different kind of marijuana. Can you imagine the first pot millionaire holding forth on the merits of his particular brand of capitalism? Ben and Jerry are bad enough. Actually, come to think of it, Ben and Jerry would probably be the first pot millionaires. Hash Cookies and Cream anyone? Morrocan Road?

For some people such considerations are irrelevant. It's a straitforward case of natural justice. Why should anyone be punished for doing something which harms them and no one else? Aren't we born with an inalienable right to listen to reggae, pierce our tongues and cultivate nose hair? That the state should protect people from themselves is anathema to many people--and downright un-American to boot. Surely individuals are the best judges of what is and isn't in their best interests?

Well no, actually, they're not. Beyond a grubby instinct for self-preservation most people are completely incapable of pursuing their own interests, particularly when their brains are fried on hemp. As my own worst enemy, I have an inalienable right to be protected from myself. I have no objection to my tax dollars being spent on making it as difficult as possible for me to indulge my desire for a drug which will reduce my bedroom to "a hellish pit full of sad little bits of cardboard, twisted pieces of paper and flecks of tobacco," to quote Martin Amis.

Perhaps the best argument for keeping pot illegal is the Dutch. In Amsterdam dope is to all intents and purposes legal, with cute little cofee shops--the Starbucks of Europe--selling a variety of exotic-sounding brands like "Afghan Black," "Thai Stick" and "Moroccan Red." (The same people who will boycott consumer products because of the conditions in Third World sweatshops will happily puff away at "Nepalise Temple Balls," even though most pot factories make Nike's plant in Vietnam look like Microsoft.) The upshot is that a whole generation of Dutch people have grown up riding bicylces, listening to New Age music and not shaving under their armpits. As for their teeth, believe me, you don't want to know.

Spy, 1997