Paul Berenger never ceases to amaze me; his opportunism is apparently limitless and there does not seem to be anything that will escape his exploitative tendencies. You can leave the man alone in a dense forest, with no transport, and thousands of miles away from the nearest village and you can bet your bottom dollar that somehow the world will hear the next day his biting remarks about the government?s love of nature and lack of development in those ecologically pristine areas! He is simply incapable of seeing any bandwagon pass by without being the first person to jump on it and any cause with even the merest hint of populism attached to it is guaranteed to have him as its loudest proponent.

It would appear that Berenger is annoyed because some musicians made a few injudicious comments regarding marijuana at the Festival Reggae Donn Sa and this provoked Berenger into immediately jumping on his favourite horse called self righteousness. ?Maurice est un état de droit,? he thundered on saturday and a few people probably breathed a sigh of appreciation and relief at this statement of the obvious. Most of us scratched our heads, thought about the corollary to that statement, and posed the pertinent question: why is ?un état de droit?concerned to the point of obsession and callous vindictiveness with what is by and large a private hobby indulged by a large number of its otherwise law abiding citizens? What is so bad about marijuana that compels people to adopt such a strong and hypocritical attitude towards it?

Before I go any further, let me make my position absolutely clear in order to preempt any moralising idiot from condemning me for the views in this article. I am not arguing for the legalisation of marijuana; I am merely asking for a more mature and responsible approach to a topic that has always been shrouded with the hypocrisy stemming from snobs who have nothing better to do with their lives than constant criticisms and a perverse desire to impose their dubious moral standards on the rest of us. The views against cannabis arise not from medical considerations but from social conditioning and the snobbish element attached to it : it is deemed to be used only by the ti dimounes and we therefore adopt the grossly patronising attitude that we have to defend them from themselves. The truth is it is used by all strata of society but only the lowest stratum is punished for it. Whenever I ask someone why marijuana is so bad, the stock answer is : ?well, it is illegal.? When I probe further and ask ?why is it illegal,? no one can come up with a satisfactory explanation apart from ?it must be bad?. Circular reasoning is always erroneous but this is ludicrous! So marijuana is bad because it is illegal, but tobacco and alcohol (which cause far greater damage to society) are good because they are legal ?

?Arrest by the police, the inevitable sentence of imprisonment for possession of even the stubbed end of a ?spliff?, and the consequential destruction of one?s career.?

In Mauritius, we allow the wholesale consumption of tobacco and alcohol and until recently were encouraging people to take up cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol through widescale advertising. The government receives billions in taxes from the organised sale of tobacco and alcohol and nobody sees anything wrong in the sale of a product that is known to be THE major cause of cancer. We all know tobacco is highly toxic and yet a large number of us continue to smoke that weed with the full blessing of the authorities. So why do we adopt such a punitive and vindictive attitude towards the consumption of another ?weed ?, especially when it is scientifically known that its effects are not worse than tobacco?

(Incidentally, cannabis is NOT addictive, unlike tobacco and alcohol). What is so bad about marijuana that compels people to take such strong attitudes against it? Its main chemical ingredient, THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) calms people down and induces a euphoric and sedate effect in the user; it has never been known to cause the aggression induced so regularly by alcohol and which forms the basis of the scandalous level of domestic violence in our country. It has been proven to be effective in the control of glaucoma and in reducing the pain and discomfort of multiple sclerosis sufferers; it is also now regularly used as a palliative treatment for the last stages of terminal cancer.

Nauseating hypocrisy

I first became aware of the nauseating hypocrisy surrounding the issue of marijuana many years ago when I was a student (and not a very good one!) at what was then considered the most prestigious college on the island. Like most of my contemporaries, I tried marijuana, but, unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale and was violently sick after five puffs and I have not touched it since. At least 75 % of the students had smoked marijuana at one time or another and many of them are now judges, doctors, politicians, industrialists, senior civil servants, journalists, senior customs officers and police officers, etc. All respectable, upstanding, law abiding, role models now! The most prolific smoker happened to be the son of the then police commissioner. None of them would be in their current positions now if they had fallen victim to one of the most blatantly unjust accidents of life : arrest by the police, the inevitable sentence of imprisonment for possession of even the stubbed end of a ?spliff?, and the consequential destruction of one?s career.

We are criminalising a huge number of our people simply because of a personal habit indulged away from the public gaze and in the privacy of their homes. These people end up with a criminal record and most of them are then condemned to a life of unemployment and misery because no one wants to employ a gandia smoker. How do we expect them to make a living then ? Are we not forcing them into a life of crime in order to survive ? And it is always the working classes who end up getting caught and sent to prison. The vast number of middle class kids who like their gandia can smoke without any problems, and if a police officer is careless enough to arrest one of them, Daddy will sort things out with a senior officer.

Barely veiled attack

Perhaps the greatest indictment of the legal system in this so called ?état de droit? is the incomprehensible cruelty in punishment for a personal habit and the comparative leniency towards the psychopaths who maim, murder, torture, rape, sodomise, stab, and rob the young, the old, and the defenceless. Clifford Edouard is serving THIRTY years in prison because he was found with FOUR pouliahs of gandia; a restaurant owner has been in prison for the last three years and still awaiting trial because someone arrested with 3 kilos of gandia told the police that the drugs belonged to the restauranteur. And yet, people accused of murder, rape, and crimes that destroy the lives of ordinary citizens are routinely given bail and if they are eventually found guilty can look forward to a relatively short sentence of imprisonment.

Those accused of the armed robbery at the MCB this year and which resulted in the death of a bank employee are now free on bail and can look forward to many years of freedom before their trial starts, despite the weight of evidence against them; no doubt the 48 million rupees still missing from that murderous robbery will help them to cope with the harsh realities of their new found freedom! The perpetrators of the notorious gang rape and sodomy which moved Berenger so much as prime minister that he gave a public show of solidarity with the victims who were on bail for several months before receiving a sentence of imprisonment not exceeding eight years. In this état de droit, we make the right noises whenever a 3 year old child is raped, sodomised, and butchered or an elderly woman is savaged by the uncontrolled concupiscence of a psycho rendered disinhibited and aggressive by alcohol; and we then shrug our shoulders when the guilty parties are eventually given an insultingly lenient sentence. We meekly accept the so called legality of the people we vote to power to then use our money to feed their delusions of grandeur; this etat de droit apparently entitled prime minister Berenger to buy for himself a Rs 14 million Limousine at our expense, to increase drastically the salary and expenses of all politicians, and to appoint many of his friends as advisers on extravagant salaries that would have been better spent on providing decent shelter for the homeless. This État de droit allows whichever government we vote to power to use the police force as its personal property and to relegate our protection a long way behind the apparent need for the police to act as personal bodyguards to these megalomaniacs.

Journalists continually accept whatever politicians say as unimpeachable pearls of wisdom and rarely question the self important statements made under the cover of a press conference. Berenger?s spurious appeal to the État de droit at his press conference on saturday was a barely veiled attack on Rama Valaydon and a childish reminder of the latter?s views on marijuana. I hope Valaydon has not lost any of the rash bravery that prompted him to make public his views on this controversial topic and I hope he will be able to implement a more rational and modern legal framework regarding the use of marijuana. It cannot be right that people?s lives are being destroyed for a personal habit that does not affect anyone else and sentences of long periods of imprisonment for possession of a small amount of marijuana are incongruous with what happens in the rest of the world where the same ?offence? would attract at best a caution. Given the choice, would you rather cross paths on a dark night with a drunk (i.e. intoxication through legal means) or with someone at peace with the world following an illegal spliff ? Journalists will do us a huge favour if they asked any politician this question the next time he/she tries to numb us with the chill blast of chastising morality and bare faced hypocrisy : Have you ever smoked marijuana? We will know straightaway if the politician is lying because his lips will move.

R. A. J.