Why I don't want my children smoking dope

I would be heartily relieved if I never saw, smelt or stumbled upon the remains of a spliff again

With a bit of luck David Blunkett's new laissez-faire attitude to cannabis will put my kids off smoking dope. If it's legal it will no longer be cool. At the risk of sounding like Mother Teresa I would be heartily relieved if I never saw, smelt or stumbled across the remains of a spliff in the house again. I'd be even more relieved if I never saw, smelt or stumbled across any of the children's dope-smoking friends, particularly when they're in that strange state known as "mong',' which basically means zapped.

Two of my children smoke dope regularly "to chill out, mum'' they tell me. "To relax. Everyone does.'' Fair enough. Heaven knows, having to go to three lectures a week at university is incredibly stressful. When I visited my son's hall of residence to deliver the usual Red Riding Hood supplies, the first smell that hit me on the staircase was not the obligatory institutional cabbage. It was weed.

What's even more stressful from a mother's point of view is any sort of discussion about that ethical minefield that the whole subject of cannabis has become. At least three of our friends have had children expelled from school for the possession of illegal substances discovered in blazer pockets, bedroom slippers and Homer Simpson pencil case respectively.

At this point I should perhaps mention that a century ago I too was expelled from school for smoking. No, not pot - Players. Oh, to return to those days of simple innocent pleasure when happiness meant a quick drag on the soggy butt of a Players Number One. Or if you were lucky, a black Russian Sobranie from Camilla Playdell-Bouverie's secret tuck-box store. It didn't alter our minds, it made us cough, but we didn't want to be mong, we wanted to be cool. Nothing much changes.

Here's where, by rights, I should move seamlessly into arguing the case for cannabis, which doesn't cause cancer, against ordinary tobacco, which does. From there I progress even more persuasively to defending the recreational merits of cannabis over alcohol because the former renders its users peaceful, chilled, relaxed, even, God help them, mong, whereas the latter brings out the violent beast within. Too late, alas, too late.

Six years ago, for reasons too complex to go into now - oh well, why not. I was given a joint at a party and after two puffs of best skunk my congenital vole vision was transformed into Harrier jet night fighter. The usual media feeding frenzy ensued. My views on the merits of cannabis for medical purposes, for recreational purposes, for space brownies, the legalisation of etc., were canvassed. Dr Lester Grinspoon, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, sent me his seminal textbook Marihuana Reconsidered. I was invited on countless discussion programmes and debates where I voiced my liberal pro-cannabis views against a posse of drug councillors, drug tsars and stuffy social workers. For 15 minutes I was less the queen than the dowager duchess of dope and for once, albeit briefly, my children viewed me with respect.

So why you wonder the volte face now, when my ambitions for legalising cannabis appear to have been realised. Because cannabis is no longer the happy-clappy giggle-and-fall-over stuff I've smoked at university. It's not the pretty green plants we grew in window boxes. It's harsh, chemical and, for a lot of kids, downright dangerous, encouraging paranoia, psychosis, schizophrenia and God knows what else. I don't mind adults smoking dope, it's their decision. But at least half a dozen of my 13-year-old son's class smoke joints.

Youthful brain cells still in the process of development couldn't possibly benefit from a full-frontal assault by White Widow, the variety of skunk that zapped my damaged retina into miraculous (if stoned) vision. Spliffs, pot, dope, ganja, zoot, hash, weed, marijuana, cannabis has many names, but the fashionable one that kids smoke these days is skunk. It's a subtle blend of Haze, the most powerful of the Sativa strain, Afghani Indika and two different weeds from Mexico and Thailand. There are scores of different skunk varieties, all with romantic names like Snow White, Khali Mist, Northern Lights and White Widow, which won the High Times Growers' Cup in Amsterdam in 1996.

So there you go. I've done my homework, and like all good maths students I've shown my workings before printing my conclusion. You had better reach your own.