sussed

lets get a couple of things straight at the outset.
1] i have no problems with the police. it's one of those necessary jobs that someone has to do and the police are not liked - that is until you need them. i wanted to be a copper, i think it was all that watching z-cars and reading ed mcbain that did it to me - however i am colour blind so that was me stopped from being a plod. (often wonder what would have happened if i had been able to go through with my first choice career. one thing that would have happened would be that i would not have brought down the ire of the super radicals at college who couldn't see the irony in the comment "the police wouldn't let me join because i colour blind as it meant i wouldn't know who to hit in a riot", oddly the peter sutcliffe joke didn't go down well either. i tell you alternative comedy's loss was distributions gain!)
so i have no beef with the police.
2] i am anti drug. i don't smoke, i don't drink and i don't do drugs (oh ok i know coffee is a drug and yes i am almost at a point where i need to mainline it to get a benefit from it!). i have been pretty much anti drug most of my life.

right that sets the scene a little (and you can already guess where this is going).

i was coming back from a meal out with some friends, we had gone to a wagamama's (very nice it was too, a little expensive for me - but then i tend to go for quantity rather than quality). as we made our way back to liverpool street station we all smelt the heavy perfume of cannabis, so strong it was thick and sickly in the air. and it so obviously came from the skinny skanky youths who had scurried past us (part speed walking and part running). so we get to the station, we all start chatting, the two women who were with us go into the station to catch a tube. that left four of us, and the usual lets go for a drink, no i can't , oh you know you want to, no, yes type thing.
when all of a sudden a fresh faced blonde buzzcut bloke strides up to us, whips out his id and tells us he suspects we are smoking and carrying drugs.
as he is telling me this the plod squad had surrounded us (yeah like any of us looked like we were capable of running!) so under section 23 we are all to be searched.
i get a little bloke rummaging through my pockets and bag - he looks like he has only just gotten out of junior school, and looks like he would have trouble breaking up a fight in a junior school playground. while he is doing that i am being asked questions by a wpc - such as name, address, age, height, do i consider myself white british (how i wished i had said no it's black british) so that she can radio it in to see if i am a hardened crim.
my favourite question was "do you smoke?" why did that matter? when i said no it wasn't like they stopped the search!
meanwhile young plod is asking do i have anything sharp in my pockets - no i say. well that is until he finds the boxcutter i still had in there - oooops. then when he is searching my bag he finds my recent collection of prostitute call cards - ooooooops (he also finds a notebook i thought i had lost - so every cloud has a silver lining!) .
of course the search is taking place in the open so every tom dick and harry is watching us.

naturally they find nothing.
the detective who had "spotted" us smoking, but had missed the culprits (and i admit they were moving at a fast pace and were drug thin so could have just appeared to be a whisp in the night to the untrained eye, besides we were middle aged and walking really slow....) just moved off without saying a word.
it's at moments like these you can see how they must irritate (to put it mildly) the ethnic youth they stop.

when you are stopped like that you are given a "report" of the incident.
some odd bits about that:
1] it tells you what they can and can't do - so it's nice to see that after the event.
2] it's a record in their books - so does that mean it goes on to a computer somewhere? something to check via the freedom of information at some point in the future.

now the really annoying part of this is that when i am reading this the next morning - they have my name, address and height right.
i will even give them that i am stocky build.
but i am described as having long grey hair. it's brown with some silver in it.
brown you hear me. brown hair.
(it's not like i am vain!)

there is a serious point that comes out of this - as i said at the start i am not a fan of drugs i don't use them and probably never will. but i have moved my position from an outright ban, clamp down on the distribution of it, lock 'em up and throw away the key to a make it totally legal tpye of stance. (to be honest this was also helped by the fact that the only people i have known to have an addiction as part of the reasons for their deaths were both addicted to booze and fags and both were critical of drugs. the only difference seemed to be some you can get over the counter - the other you had to find a dealer).
let the tobacco and alcohol companies coin a nice profit by selling and distributing cannabis, heroin, e and whatever else the drug of choice is for the users of the world.
strikes me that legalisation of it has more positives going for it than trying to ban it does.
it means there is no link to the underworld, it means it can be priced sensibly, it means it can be gotten at any time, it means the state can rake in taxes from it, it means you take drug dealers off the streets - after all where would you go to buy you hit from a dodgy bloke in a club or your local newsagent or supermarket? it's a win win situation for all concerned. it also means that the police do not have to waste their times on silly stop and searches.
so you know it makes sense - make all drugs completely legal. it will be my rallying cry when i go and stand for election.