Perhaps, as reported by the satirical website The Daily Mash, we need a health warning on big cigarette papers: “Cannabis smoking will lead to a slow and painful conversation.”

Like Ms Smith and other ministers, I too can confess to “experimenting” briefly at university, although luckily I quit before exhibiting the symptoms of a narrow mind. 

There can, of course, be an antisocial side to booze. But there is also a far more sociable aspect. It is conducive to having a laugh with friends in the pub rather than a lonely fit of giggles in the corner of a dope-smoke- filled room, and tends to make people feel confident and amorous rather than insecure and useless. Being preached to by “civilised” cannabis smokers might make the most pacifist drinker feel like punching their lights out.

If there is anything duller than a dopehead, it is the endless debate about whether cannabis should be Class B or C. Frankly, who gives an F? The classification system makes as much sense as a spliffed-up student discussing moral philosophy. It bears little relation to the risks or popularity of any drug.

Magic mushrooms, for example, are Class A even though, as one doctor says, “it is doubtful whether they ever cause more than a bellyache”. Ecstasy's Class A status has not dissuaded a generation of users from inducing a dance-trance that appears more moronic than ecstatic. Ritalin remains a Class B drug, yet is freely doled out to “hyperactive” children. As for cannabis, its popularity has fallen since it was last downgraded to C.

Might that have something to do with those ministers admitting that they tried it? Perhaps Ms Smith's best preventative option would be to declare that dope is now officially classed C for Cool.

Or maybe new Labour should give up the attempt to reclassify itself as a Class A Government by waging another phoney war on drugs, and instead try inspiring young people with something more mind-expanding than dope.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk