Apparently if you possess up to 500 cannabis joints you won’t be counted as a dealer, according to the Home Office. It seems a normal user might be expected to possess up to that many spliffs at one time. If so, then that’s a rather large stash of weed, isn’t it? What might they be doing with that many joints - getting ready for hibernation? Do nicotine smokers have that many fags (American readers - both of you - note that a ‘fag’ is a cigarette in English English) at any one time?

Anyway.

Has the government heard of ‘demand and supply’? Demand is what people do when they want something. Supply is how the more enterprising get rich - they sell to the demanders whatever it is that they are demanding.

If you want to stop drug abuse then slapping the dealers all over town and going soft on the users is a mistake. The arrangement with users should be simple: possession gets you a big fine the first time and a prison sentence thereafter. You get extra time inside if you refuse to identify your dealer. All David Cameron’s tosh about education is laughable. Kids who take drugs often won’t be at school to hear the lesson and, besides, people taking drugs already know the stuff’s not exactly a health supplement. They consume them for reasons - street credibility, excitement, cool, peer pressure, depression, gross stupidity etc - that are entirely beyond the reach of educators or common sense.

The lure of drugs - and the grip such a lifestyle can have on individuals - is that strong that it can only be combated by an equally strong - but opposing - force. Asking people to apply intellect for uncertain, intangible benefits that are largely abstract or, at best, long-term when instant gratification - along with its accompanying elevation of status amongst peers - beckons enticingly is a mostly wasted effort.

Ask anybody who smokes, eats too much, drinks too much, doesn’t exercise, spends more than they earn, doesn’t save for a pension, puts off important jobs or engages in any one of a large number of minor sins if they recognise that they would be better off if they didn’t. Almost all do recognise it - and some try hard to change but, in the end, we mostly continue to enjoy the moment and ignore the damage. We get some benefit now from the habit and that’s what counts. The same applies to drug use.

The motivation to resist the pressure to try drugs - or to resist continuing using them once one has got over the initial taboo - must be applied from outside. The application must come from the forces of law and order and what must be applied is pain. Only financial pain or custodial pain will remove from drug-taking the sense of bohemian living, harmless rebellion, ‘everybody’s doing it’ attitude, that many otherwise ordinary people associate with the habit. It’s not enough to say that the occasional spliff or tab is no big deal. On its own it may not be. And maybe the user is a well employed professional, with a family and his habit is infrequent so where’s the harm?

But the accumulative effect of all this use is an expanded drugs economy which means that dealing in drugs remains a viable profession for many otherwise useless people and who in turn encourage the importation of all sorts of narcotics into this country. Users supply profits to dealers. That’s why we have dealers and dealers will always find ways of getting their product into the country. It is users who should be targeted. When they are no longer users the stuff is no longer required.