High society's weed addiction: how grass went upper class

At the capital’s power-party hubs, amid the whiff of sex and success, there is also the sweet smell of… wait a minute, is that… weed? Leaving the celebrity-strewn open-air Serpentine party earlier this month, I had that very same sensation. Pot has escaped the confines of student flats, artists’ (I use that term broadly) studios and middle-class sitting rooms where frazzled parents mollify their moods and their marriages. It has made a bid for the spotlight and is taking centre stage as high society and high fashion’s drug of choice.

Partying society stoners are clear about the fact that smoking a joint, just as a party hits lift-off, often prevents them from heading to the loo for a line of coke. It gives them a hint of naughtiness with far fewer consequences, they say. ‘I can get a mini-thrill, loosen up and not feel like a bore if I have a couple of puffs,’ says one West London gallery owner, ‘but I’m not the gurning loon in the corner. Coke is for losers. Getting stoned is… kind of sexy.’ Melissa, a 29-year-old stylist, says: ‘I pre-roll a spliff and carry it in cling film in my DVF make-up bag. Everything is more bearable at a fashion event when you’re stoned. At an Isabel Marant party in a derelict church on Oxford Street last Fashion Week, me and my mates smoked a joint round the side of the venue. The bouncer said, “Girls, it’s fine, just stand a bit further from the door!” ’

Cannabis is, lest we forget, still illegal, a class B drug carrying a sentence of up to five years for possession, and 14 for supply. It is also dangerous, particularly if taken by teenagers who have the greatest chance of developing psychosis as their brains are still developing.

Electronic cigarettes have opened up a whole new avenue of possibility, I am told. There’s no need to take that dope walk around the block when you can now get e-joints where the pot will still burn but there are no fumes. Although, apparently, it’s less fun than sparking up a dooby and sharing it.

While permarexic London ladies might piously wave away the trays of champagne and cocktails, they’ll still whip a spliff out of their box clutch and sneak a few puffs on the smoking terrace. ‘I save my calories by existing on black coffee throughout the day,’ says one fashion executive, ‘and then I can really enjoy my munchies. Booze calories are no fun.’

You are also — goes their reasoning — far less likely to fall over, get aggressive or have sex with the wrong person when stoned, rather than drunk or high, these women think. It’s embarrassing to be really pissed or really coked-up, whereas being stoned seems just cute. Innocent even, compared with what’s gone on at all the highest-octane parties over the past few years. Smoking a joint is, after all, not having a threesome or starting a fire, they reason. ‘When I’m stoned I know I’m not firing on all cylinders, but I can still make sensible choices about who to avoid and how to get home,’ says a friend. ‘But when I’m hammered I might think it’s a good time to pitch a business idea to some big cheese, or chat up a married man, or walk out on to a dark Peckham street by myself to try to hail a cab.’

The feeling is, for these women, that being stoned is less dangerous in every way. It also allows you to keep control over your balance and your limbs, which means less risk of party injuries and humiliation and every kind of chronic morning-after regret.

Pot-smoking reinvents the hangover: turning it from a head-pounding, stomach-turning, sandwich-craving walk of shame into something that a double-shot macchiato can deal with, I discover. Post-munchie mortification? A high-intensity workout can deal with that — or as one very intense hedge-fund wife told me: ‘Munchies are for rookies. If you want to get stoned but don’t want to get fat, suck on lemon slices.’ Short-term memory loss? That’s what smartphones are for. ‘I make a note of everything,’ says a 37-year-old media lawyer who likes a joint and a hot bath every night and, when she goes abroad, hides it in her knickers. ‘We don’t need actual memories any more. The virtual ones are better.’

At the flashiest house parties you might be expected to freeze on the balcony to smoke a fag, yet cosying up by the fire with a joint is somehow now considered acceptable. A cloud of weed smoke can add a bit of creative edge without contributing a sense of coke-sleaze. ‘I did go stoned to one Kensington dinner party,’ reports a thirty-something journalist who lives in Maida Vale, ‘only to find it was wall-to-wall politicised Americans who insisted on going around the table asking for everyone’s opinion on Hillary as president. I got a terrible case of fear and had to plead a migraine to escape.’

A female luxury travel PR who gets stoned every weekend recently went with her brother to score some weed on a notoriously dangerous Harlesden estate. ‘I was absolutely terrified — who did I think I was? Stringer Bell? I’m basically Joyce Grenfell. I threatened to tell my parents if my brother went there again as I was convinced he’d get shot. He, of course, believes that pot is the great leveller. Idiot.’