So Gordo Brown has decided to raise the drug classification of cannabis from Class C (slightly more naughty than cigarettes, confiscated only if smoked right under a policeman's nose), to Class B (scourge of society, up to 5 years in prison, one notch below crack).

Now, I'm sure none of you good little MySpacers and MySpacettes have ever smoked the demon weed (it's evil for one thing, go watch the movie 'Reefer Madness' if you don't believe me), but I'm also damn certain Mr. Brown never has. Once again we've got people who think they know what's best for us disregarding the science, the evidence, popular opinion (outside Daily Mail island) and every thinktank ever assembled.

Well, it's not as if our prisons are full to bursting as it is, there's loads of room to bang up anyone caught holding a spliff, plenty of space. And of course, jail is the last place where somebody's habit could possibly get worse. Mind you, this might all be irrelevant. The police have said they're not going to change their approach just because of Jacqui Smith's idiotic directive (currently they confiscate the drug - the same way they take open cans of lager off Australians on their way into Camden tube - and let people off with a warning).

But why does our horribly flawed PM believe that increasing the paperwork in the coppers' in-tray and alienating more of his dwindling support (like me - well, I was his support, until today) is the way to go? Is it because he's swallowed the myths, half-truths and canards wholesale? It's a gateway drug! Ooh, a gateway drug… yes, that buzz of cannabis I enjoy so much makes me believe a similar buzz might be gained from something harder… PCP maybe, or Crystal Meth. They're all pretty much the same aren't they? Shit, it might even lead me on to the biggest killer of all – TOBACCO!

As Howard Marks says: "If you like smoking marijuana, you want to smoke more marijuana." What you don't do is suddenly develop a propensity for heroin or not make it into work because you were up late on a peyote binge. It doesn't work like that you morons.

Then there's the idea that 'de 'erb' is dangerously strong nowadays. Well, alright, it's probably more powerful than what they were smoking at Glastonbury thirty years ago. Archive footage shows that to be mainly a mixture of tie-dye, patchouli and straw. But compared to what they sell in Amsterdam cafes, absolutely legally, whatever us Brits can get hold of on the streets is all pretty much of a muchness. The tabloids might scream TWENTY TIMES STRONGER! Or a hundred, or a million billion, but, as the scientists will tell you, it's all made up.

When you add to that the way the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has said pot should remain Class C several times (and I love the way Brown kept sending that back, as if the evidence would somehow change), the way incidences of schizophrenia have actually fallen in the last decade (proving there's no link between excessive cannabis consumption – which I wouldn't recommend by the way, you'll only start writing a paranoid web site or something – and mental illness), or the way children are actually trying it less than before the drug was downgraded to Class C, and you have a pretty fucking flimsy argument for Brown's stance.

In fact, now that 'the booner' carries more legal risk, it suddenly seems extra illicit and exciting, something which, I would argue, means teenagers are actually more likely to try it.

This all illustrates why Brown is on his way out (not that the Tories are any better, however many former cokeheads they count amongst their front bench they still pretend to think the same way for votes). This PM is a repressed Scotsman building a repressive society, taking from the poor and giving to the rich while rendering what few pleasures we have left horribly illegal.

Still, he wants to "send a message" to people, that smoking cannabis isn't acceptable. Yeah, they're listening to you Gordo, and if you're lucky everyone might go back to the only substance widely available for letting off steam after a hard week, ever since the mushroom loophole got closed and with other alternatives continuing to be demonised.

So forget the pot. Let's all go in for perpetual binge-drinking, let's fight amongst ourselves and end up in hospital with cirrhosis of the liver, let's cost the economy millions of work days each year and lose all sense of decorum. And our children can see that society encourages this instead, whereupon they'll think it's fine to go down the road with a few bottles of industrial strength cider and kick some bloke to death, the sound of the alcohol industry counting its profits in the background all but drowned out by his dying screams.

I love this country, I really do. Go back to bed UK. Drink Stella, watch the new series of Gladiators (presented by Ian 'I'm not your jester!' Wright) and vote for your oppressors. The leaders have it all under control.

Al

More Doobie antics HERE.