It’s easier to order a wee dram

AMONG all the showbizzy hoo-ha in America last week, a rather important decision was made, quite quietly, in a few US states.

People in California, Nevada and Massachusetts voted to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. As opposed, I presume, to its professional use by, say, athletes, cyclists and other wonderful role models for our children.

Media wags have already been joking that Americans will need a regular reefer to get them through the next four years. Curiously, four other states, plus Washington DC, have already legalised it, which suggests they had an advance whiff of the way the political wind was blowing, president-wise.

But there are serious implications for us, because when America sneezes we catch cold. So when they exhale their grassy fumes, we’ll eventually inhale them.

It doesn’t really bother me, to be honest. Most of Scotland is off its face on booze most of the time anyway so if the punters could get hold of cannabis as well, it couldn’t make them much worse. Might even make them less inclined to smash each other’s faces in.

But if it is ever legalised here, I won’t be trying it. Not that I’ve

Do you ask for weed, grass, hash, ganga, pot or dope?

anything against recreational drugs as such – we all need a little help to get over the hump sometimes, and the odd glass of wine or bijou dramette does the heart good.

But look at the long-term damage wreaked by this stuff. Look especially at a whole generation of geriatric rockers who hit their peak in the 1960s.

They’re still hacking round the music venues of the world but not one of them has produced anything worth listening to since 1975. And that’s being generous.

Tragically (for us) their minds are so addled by all the weed they ingested in the ’ 60s they don’t realise they’re rubbish and should have quit while they were ahead.

Yes, most over-50s are rubbish. But most of us have enough brain cells left to know, and keep it quiet.

And there is another reason I couldn’t be bothered toking a spliff. Too complicated.

Do you ask for marijuana, cannabis, hash, weed, pot, grass, ganga or dope?

Then do you smoke it (in a reefer, joint or spliff), bake it, sniff it, rub it in as an ointment . . . ?

“Gin and tonic, please” is much easier.