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雷达卡
Cannabis
大麻
Legal high
法律至上
Quietly, cannabis has in effect been decriminalised in Britain
吸食大麻悄无声息地在英国被无罪化了
CANNABOOST plant food is one of the best selling products at the Hydroexpress hydroponics store in Stirchley, a working-class part of Birmingham. The small shop, its windows filled with graffiti-style posters, also sells fertilisers with names like “Nirvana” and “Bud Candy”, alongside strong lights and giant rolls of tin foil to line greenhouses. In one corner, a couple of juicy-looking tomato plants grow in a demonstration set-up. But the youth behind the counter guesses that his customers are “not all growing tomatoes”.
添加了大麻成分的肥料是斯蒂尔切利（伯明翰的一个工人阶级聚居区）一家喷雾水栽培商店销量最好的产品之一。这家小店的橱窗上贴满了涂鸦式的海报，它也卖一些名叫“尼尔瓦纳”（Nirvana）和“巴德勘狄”（Bud Candy）的肥料，被摆放在打着强光灯和大片锡纸做成的温室里。在另一个角落，几株看起来多汁的番茄植物在一个展示装置上生长。但站在柜台后的一个年轻人在想：他的顾客“都不是生长中的番茄”。
Birmingham now has 58 hydroponics shops, up from 42 just a year ago. Whether aided by the latest plant-growing technology or not, cannabis production is soaring. According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, the number of cannabis factories detected each year increased from around 800 in 2004 to 7,000 in 2010. Birmingham is one of the most fertile areas; West Midlands Police, which set up a Cannabis Disposal Unit in 2010 to tackle the problem, dismantled more than 500 factories last year.
伯明翰现在有58家水栽培商店，而一年前只有42家。无论是否因为有最新植物种植技术的帮助，大麻的产量都正在猛增。根据英国警察协会的调查，大麻工厂的数量从2004年的800间增加到了2010年的7000间。伯明翰是大麻产量最多的地区之一；中西部地区的警署在2010年设置了一个大麻销毁机构来处理这一问题，该机构去年拆除了超过500间的大麻工厂。
Your correspondent visited one recently closed by police; the gardener was a cocaine-addicted woman growing a few plants in a spare room in the hope of earning a cut. Other set-ups have been found in tents in the bedrooms of high-rise council flats and in the lofts of terraced family houses. Many growers are simply feeding their own habits. As one officer on the West Midlands Police drugs team says, “It’s becoming the most popular cottage industry in the country.”
记者拜访过一间最近刚被警察关闭的工厂；种植者是一名吸食可卡因成瘾的妇女，她在一间空房里栽了几株大麻并希望以此赚些小钱。其他一些栽培装置被发现于许多高层公营公寓的卧室里以及一些错层式房屋的阁楼上。许多栽培者单纯是栽来为自己食用，正如一名任职于中西部警署毒品稽查队的警官说的那样，“它渐渐成为了这个国家最流行的家庭产业。”
Small growers are squeezing out both importers and the well-connected, often Vietnamese, gangs that once dominated domestic production. The big cannabis factories set up by the latter, with their telltale heat hazes, are fairly easy to spot. Smaller operations are often uncovered only when the electric lights start fires, or when local teenagers mount a burglary.
许多小户栽培者正不断排挤进口商和那些能打通关系的团伙（大多是越南人），这些人很早就控制了国内市场。由于爱互相告密，后面建立的大型大麻工厂很容易就被揭发。当有灯光照射或是本地小青年晚上进去偷盗时，那些小作坊通常就被暴露了。
The police and the courts can neither keep up with the surge in small-scale production, nor are they desperately keen to do so. Last month the government published new sentencing guidelines that advised judges to treat small cultivators less strictly. Attitudes to smokers are softening, too. The reclassification of cannabis in 2009, from class C to the more stringent class B, was oddly accompanied by a more liberal approach to policing consumption. Users caught on the street are rarely arrested; rather, they are issued “cannabis cautions” (a reprimand which doesn’t appear on a criminal record) or fined.
警察和法院既招架不住小规模生产活动的激增，也无法对他们怎样。上月，该地ZF发布了新的量刑指南，以建议法官们对小户种植者们从轻处罚。人们对吸食者的态度也渐渐变得缓和了一些。奇怪的是，伴随着2009年大麻重新分类（从C类到更为严格的B类）的是对大麻消费更为宽松的监管。在街上被抓捕的人很少被拘留，而是被训斥“慎食大麻”（不会出现在犯罪记录里）或是被罚款。
In Brixton, a south London neighbourhood, an open-air cannabis market exists within ten minutes’ walk of the underground station. The dealers are frequently moved on but they soon regroup elsewhere. As one dealer admits, his competitors are a bigger hassle than the police. “They get to fightin’, over money and things,” he says in a deep Caribbean drawl. Violence is far more likely to get a dealer into legal trouble than business.
邻近伦敦南部的布里克斯顿有一个露天大麻市场，它离地铁步行不到十分钟。那里的商贩经常被撵走但很快又会聚集到其他地方。正如一个商贩所说的，他的竞争对手比警察更难对付。“他们会为钱和一些杂事争斗，”他懒洋洋地说，用一种浓厚的加勒比式口吻。
Strangely, this lackadaisical approach is not encouraging people to take up the reefer habit. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the proportion of people who admit to having used cannabis in Britain has fallen more quickly than in any other European country over the past few years. Just 6.8% of adults told another survey that they used cannabis in 2010, down from 10.9% eight years earlier. The herb is now ubiquitous and effectively tolerated—and, perhaps as a result, not all that alluring.
奇怪的是，这种无精打采的口吻不会使人们对大麻产生兴趣。根据欧洲毒品和毒瘾监管中心的调查，在伦敦，承认吸过大麻的人数比例在最近几年比欧洲任何一个国家都下降得快。在2010年，仅有6.8%的成年人告诉其他调查机构他们吸过大麻，这一比例在八年前是10.9%。这种草本植物如今已普遍存在并且事实上也已经被大家容忍了 – 而且，可能由于这样，它会变得不再那么吸引人。
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