Legalisation

In front of us were row after row of cannabis plant lit by yellow lights, casting harsh shadows onto the concrete floor. We are underground. Alvin Theodore turns to me and wipes at his brown moustache.
"What do you think?" he says, voice wavering in excitement. I turn back to the 'sea of green' and breathe in.
"Smells like...food."
"That's the trichomes." he utters before leading me through a gap in the field. Alvin Theodore is a business man, I could tell by his cheap suit and the way the skin sat on his face, like an ultra-real mask, all deep-pored and hairy up the nose. He looked like a wax work animated wet. We enter another room, this one contains seedlings on three rows of shelves. Botanists walk through the columns, administering a liquid vitamin solution into the growth matter.
"When they bred dogs for a certain kind of temperament, they noticed some physical features were shared with behaviour, like if a dog was good with people it might have had floppy ears. Or a curled tail. That kind of thing. With these plants we aren't really looking for a psychological behaviour but physical traits. But what if the exterior form is intrinsically linked in some way to the interior?"
"So what you're saying is that plants have a personality, like big leaves means...this plant is good to be around? Like...this plant is fucking sound."
"More or less. It took them about fifty years to breed a little terrier from a true dog, call it forty generations huh? Think how many generations you can have with plants. They reach reproductive maturity much earlier and can have potentially hundreds of children. Not only that, we can clone them. I think this is why we've seen such a significant increase in THC levels over the last fifty years or so. If you look at the buds we have now compared to your grandpa's weed, ours looks a lot more...Lovecraftian." he says, climbing a staircase. We're in his office, decorated in formica and residue. He makes a pot of coffee.
"Tell me about your cannabinols. Would you say what you have been growing was 'kush'? Or more similar to the variety of super skunk flooding the country from Amsterdam." I enquire nonchalantly, accepting the cup from Alvin.
"I'm running a business model that fits the high class stoner, providing the highest quality product on the market. I have a degree in Evolution from Oxford, I've travelled to the states to see how they do it. Recreational cannabis is going to be a huge cash crop, bigger than...wheat."
"Wheat?"
"Celiac's on the increase. Why not replace wheat with weed?" he said. I nodded encouragingly. I always enjoyed meeting a person willing to maximise their concept to it's fullest potential. It wasn't just a product with a single purpose, it was a multi-faceted money spinner that could enter various revenue streams. Food, clothes, medicine, building material, the potential was endless.
"It comes down to the waste product. Think about wood pulp, animal fats, plastic chips. We recycle all of these in pretty much everything, but we're going to have such an excess in marijuana related waste matter we can have weed in everything."

I left the meeting feeling puzzled. Was drugs okay now? I visited a juice bar to find out. Hundreds of these have popped up over the country, not selling alcohol but various juices that simply tasted nice. I ordered a virgin cranberry mojito and sat outside, digging the vibelicious music pouring out of the woofers, waiting to talk to someone. It didn't take long for a woman to ask me for a light. I passed her a box of matches I'd kept for such an occasion and watched her quietly, trying to smell her from across the table. I introduced myself and asked why she was smoking cannabis.
"It feels good, you know? I like it. Do you smoke?" she says, offering me the glass pipe stuffed with a well cornered bowl of Norwegian Haze. I breathe in the thick smoke and shut my eyes. I quoted Descartes: "I think, therefore I am."
We then get into a conversation about the fancy drinks that they had at the bar before I moved onto a more complex conversation.
"Why do you take drugs? Do you have no control over your life?"
"What do you mean?"
"Does your need to escape reality have anything to do with problems you experienced as a child?"
"Well, not really. I mean, I had a good childhood."
"I suppose you're imaginative?"
"Yes."
"Imagination is a defence mechanism for those that struggle with their own ego."
"That's ridiculous." she says, laughing.
"Let me tell you about a man who imagined the whole world was an orange. He tried to peel the whole world until they trapped him in a dungeon. Now was that because he was on drugs or was it all in his imagination?"
"I'm going inside." she says, leaving me alone. I think about the man who had tried to peel the world. What would happen if he had been successful? I look up and down the street, thankful for small favours. I think back on my experiences so far, still undecided if smoking weed was a morally safe decision. I needed to try for myself by visiting the Institute of Scientific Research in Durham.

I am strapped onto a bed, scientists move around me, though I'm unable to see them properly as a bright light shines overhead. There's so many electrodes attached to my scalp it looks like an orange plastic ponytail, my thoughts being played back to me as a wavering sine tone. A doctor administers 100 milligrams of pure cannabis via eye drops.
"Blink please." he says. I can feel the liquid drip down my temples.
"How long will it take for the weed to activate in my system?"
"Approximately four minutes." he says. I can feel hands touching at my arm and the sting of a needle.
"What are you doing?"
"Administering a saline drip in case you lose consciousness. Try to relax." says the doctor. I wait, watching the light. After a few minutes I mention I don't feel anything, so more eye drops are administered to me. There is somebody talking in the background, I think I recognise the voice.
"Who else is in the room?" I ask. There isn't a response for a while and I can't move my head.
"Myself and the nurse." says the doctor eventually.
"I think I am beginning to feel the...eye drops having an effect."
"How do you feel? Speak clearly into the microphone." he says, I can feel the foam top brushing against my lips.
"I am beginning to feel like Bob Marley." I say.
"Do you have the munchies?" he asks.
"Yes...yes, I think I can feel an increase in appetite. And a dry mouth, is that normal?" I ask. The doctor laughs.
"Just try to relax, we are moving onto the next stage of the procedure." he says.
"Okay." I say. The bed begins to tilt so I can see the whole room. In front of me are about fifty snakes inside a glass box.
"What are they there for?" I ask.
"This is an experiment." says the doctor, walking forward and smashing the box with a baseball bat before running out of the room.

And A Bucket Of Vindaloo

I sat in the cafe by the train station, examining the promotional art materials on the walls, designs including ingredients, the Earth (as planet), smiling faces and differently sized serif fonts for ease of reading. My view was pointed towards the door, the cafe at a one hundred and ten degree angle to my right, a series of mirrored tiles (13*8) at a seventy degree angle to my left. The coffee was beginning to cool, it had painted the back of my mouth bitter, ran the night spit out from beneath my gums. I hadn't brushed my teeth for six days and could taste it. I checked my phone for a moment, played a bit of Candy Crush Saga and felt with my extra sense the person I was about to meet. I looked up and saw the back of the head of the most average man in England. I couldn't see his face but I could guess. An average sized mouth beneath an average looking nose flanked by a pair of average eyes, brown or possibly blue. He turned and I waved at him. After we had introduced ourselves he went to get a coffee whilst I considered him.

Michael Smith is married and has children. He is 5'9" and weighs just a little more than me. His IQ is 100. He earns £26,000 a year, doing averagely at his average job. His political views land him somewhere between the two main partys, he lives a lifestyle that is filled with activities but are also boring. His shelves are filled with best-selling books and the walls covered in prints of famous art or photographs. He has bought a cup of tea with half a sugar in.
"So, you're the most average man in England?" I ask him. He laughs.
"Almost. I have a thirty nine inch chest and lost one of my teeth in an accident, making me have a slight deviation from perfect average, which in itself is remarkable enough to make that person unaverage."
"What is it you do?"
"I am hired by think tanks to give my opinions on things. Politics, fashion, food, philosophy, current events, that kind of thing."
"For what purpose?"
"I am almost the most average man in England, so they think that the way I see the world is how it should be. Or at least a good marker as to how another individual deviates from the quo."
"Some would call you a Zeit Mensch, what do you think about this?"
"It's true. I am a man of the time. I know what happens in an average life, not to mention life expectancy, so my life has no surprises in store. There is a certain comfort in the fact that nothing remarkably bad will happen to me, combined with the grief that nothing exciting will either." he says, looking down at his tea. I am stunned. Even his outlook on life is entirely average. It is as if nature has provided a standard of which everything else can be measured against, like a one kilogram platinum cylinder at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.
"Tell me what you think about life in pre-Industrial Japan, with an emphasis on the social ramifications of mechanising the workforce contrasted with that of the history of agriculture and the 2014 World Cup tournament."
"What was that about the World Cup?"
"You tell me." I say. Questions like that were verbal Thematic Apperception Tests, I had invented a series of them though they had yet to be tested.
"Well it's football isn't it? Football. Footy."
"Footy footy footy, kick that ball in the back of the net."
"Rub the man's leg after he fell over."
"Ooh, ah, Cantona, your sister lost her knickers in my car."
"They are clearing out the slums in Rio de Janeiro, pushing all of the criminals into the stadiums, waiting to strike once David Beckham enters the pitch, holding him hostage, chased down by helicopter gunships, and tax fraud, and government corruption."
"Footy, footy, I love footy."
"The gorgeous players for a beautiful game, oh great and powerful sporting event in which gangs from different countries or cities get together and bring people together. Ah, footy."
"Kick it ref!"
"Football crazy, football mad, grab a power pod and stick it in your hand. Three lions."