Cannabis: I told the truth

Remember that old TV ad for Hovis? Happy family, Ma, Da and the kids around the table eating bread against the swelling music of brass bands. Well, here's another, more modern image of family life: young teenage daughter is having an end-of-term sleepover for 10 other girls.

To ease the passage of what will be a long night, her mum rolls a spliff and goes, with a touch of the "guilty teenager", into the garden to smoke it. Not because she's worried about her daughter (who knows her mum sometimes smokes dope), but because maybe the other girls come from Hovis-ad families and their parents would disapprove.

Half an hour later, she's enjoying the general ebullience in the house when her daughter bursts in, surrounded by her mates.

"Mum! Are you smoking dope?" "Excuse me?" "Don't bother denying it. We can all smell it. Don't worry. You're not the only parent who does it, you know."

Behind her, a row of bright faces grins and nods. The mother conducts a straw poll. The kids' replies are eloquent and funny. In more than half their households it is open knowledge that their parents smoke dope. In another quarter the kids know, but the parents haven't told. In the rest, the children are sure they don't, but probably did in their youth.

"Don't worry, Mum," says the daughter, "It's cool. You just go listen to your music."

As the reality of law change on cannabis hits Britain and we indulge in another media panic about the impact of marijuana on young people, perhaps it would pay to look honestly at our own lives and the lives of the children who are being parented by the generation who started it all.

I didn't tell my daughters, aged 16 and 13 (and yes, that was my family above) that I smoked marijuana for years, from a gap year I spent in California in 1969 and during my studies at Cambridge. These days I'm an occasional dope smoker. For many years when my children were young I stopped: it simply wasn't compatible with the lifestyle.

By the time I was having the odd spliff again - in the latter half of the last decade - it was hard to raise the issue of consumption. The country was in a panic about drugs, I was as worried as the next parent about what my kids might end up being offered, and the illegality of marijuana made it impossible for me to have an honest conversation without putting my children in an impossible position.

Then, four or five years ago, there was a wind of change (helped, no doubt, by the dope fumes wafting out from the pasts of several politicians) and I went public. To my children and to the world. Maybe if enough sensible, coherent adults came clean about their recreational habit, we could move on from the "reefer madness" hysteria to a real debate.

It was fascinating to watch the shift. The police, not wanting to waste resources on a drug they recognised as less dangerous than others, including alcohol, were agitating for change. Meanwhile, medical research threw up compelling reasons why some patients should be prescribed marijuana to ease pain, particularly those with multiple sclerosis.

People talked honestly for the first time, from artists' stories of how it lubricated their imagination to more everyday tales of stress and release. With so many of us living fast, relentless lives, the odd spliff is an elegant way mentally to unzip, offering distance, alternative perspectives and that great healer - laughter. Used in moderation, it is both a relaxant and a stimulant - and one that doesn't result in addiction, a bottle fight or a hangover the day after. What exactly was there to be panicking about?

When I summoned up the courage to tell my kids that I smoked, they were, after an initial "God-Mum-howcouldyou?" moment, fine. The timing was perfect. Growing into their teens in an inner London comprehensive they would come across marijuana (and worse) soon enough anyway. With or without me they were going to be making decisions.

Being straight about it allowed us to have a real conversation. What exactly was its impact? How much? How often? How dangerous at what age? And what else might they be offered? How does one weigh up pleasure against damage? What had angered me most about my own rudimentary drug education was the way it minimised the pleasure in order to emphasis the pain. Once you start lying, why should anyone believe you when you tell them the truth?

It also allowed another conversation, about the other drugs that could kill them. The legal ones. Watching a generation of young women poisoning their livers and destroying their lungs, I went for two rules. First: if I couldn't stop them drinking, I could ask that they limit it severely. And second: if they decided to try dope, they should smoke it without tobacco.

This Christmas I put herbal cigarettes in my eldest daughter's stocking, so now, when the dope comes out, she has an alternative. My latest problem is even trickier. Given stories about the alarming strength of some of the stuff kids can buy on the streets, should I supply her through my own source so at least I know where it comes from? I know some will accuse me of bad parenting or social irresponsibility. They'll quote stories where dope has led or contributed to psychotic incidents. Or failed exams. Or letting life pass you by. These are valid accusations.

But the reality of parenting is that you don't always get it right. You just do it as well as you can, sifting through the evidence, knowing your own children and their peer group, to guide your actions. And underneath remain two facts: children will make their own choices, and a drug is a drug is a drug. Each, from aspirin to Prozac to heroin, has side effects.

All in all, I welcome this month's changes. At least I'll do the ozone layer a favour by cutting down on air freshener. As to the rest? I won't know the whole answer till I'm sitting with my grandchildren, talking to them about the pleasures and pitfalls of the odd spliff. Or maybe sharing one with their parents. Now that would be a challenge for the ad men.