The Cafe

I work in a local cafe in Brighton. A cafe is a small microcosm of society. There you have a real mixture of people from different backgrounds all in one small, condensed place.

So, let's examine the cafe as it currently is. The coffee and tea addicts come in the morning. They order coffee either alone or with others. Some of them smoke. They smoke outside because of government regulation on smoking, but all is well.

In come the young children. These are the ice cream addicts. So, in they come and their mums and dads buy them ice creams. The adults sit in the cafe supping their coffee and tea and the children eat their ice creams. So far, the cafe is a happy place with people indulging their little habits and vices but social order is maintained to the degree that it is both happy and healthy.

In walks a young couple celebrating the birthday of one of them. They order a bottle of wine. The cafe is licensed so they drink a whole bottle of wine between the two of them. A middle aged man is in the corner of the cafe alone. He's on his fourth beer. He goes to the bar and orders another, followed by another two. He walks up and he's stumbling. The cafe owner can see he's had too much and refuses him any more beer. He makes a fuss but admits he is drunk and goes home. The cafe is still a happy place.

Food has been consumed and customers have taken advantage of the wonderful coffee, teas and dishes served up by the cafe. People are getting along, some alone, others with friends. There are a lot of children and families here. Its all going nicely.

One Year Later...

The next year, the Government has introduced the legalisation of all drugs. Drugs can be consumed anywhere for the purpose of this story and can even be sold in cafes. So, in the morning, in walk the children and the families, loners and couples, all drinking their tea and coffee. Never one to pass up on a fast buck, the owner of the cafe has a range of drugs for sale behind the counter and has a sign outside saying, 'Formerly illegal drugs now for sale'.

So, first, in come the cannabis smokers. They walk in and order some cannabis. They sit outside in the sunshine smoking cannabis around children and families. They giggle frenetically, find everything amusing, order loads of crisps until eventually they fall asleep at the table. The families are a little confused and tell the owner. The owner tries to wake them up but he can't get them to move. He says, 'Just leave them there for a while', they'll be okay.

Then, in walk the cocaine addicts. The cokeheads walk in and order two bags of cocaine for £80. They go to a table inside the cafe, in front of families, couples and children and snort all the cocaine they have in an hour. They're loud, confident, aggressive, insulting to others and have an inflated sense of their own self-importance. They are behaving like total idiots, disliked to the rest of the cafe. They go back to the cafe owner and say, 'This s**t is amazing, give us some more.' In fact, now they've started doing cocaine in the cafe, they don't want to leave, because they're having the best party they ever had while others in the cafe find them incredibly irritating.

In come the heroin addicts. The heroin addicts buy from the owner a bag of heroin for £20 each. They've been paid and are generous and so say to the owner,

"Perhaps some heroin for your staff as well? We've been paid so we'll buy a round of heroin for your team for their wonderful customer service."

Two of the staff decline the offer, but the other two, the chef and the dishwasher decide to accept. Both are within minutes laid on the kitchen floor in a narcotic bliss for around a quarter of an hour or so. Afterwards, they jump up and ask the boss for more, and are prepared to go without wages to be paid in heroin instead. The following week, neither of them turn up for work because they have sold everything they have in order to devote their whole lives to heroin.

A bad trip in the cafe

Next walk in the acid heads. They come in, order some acid and stare at the ceiling comparing notes with each other of what they can see on the ceiling despite there being nothing there at all but white emulsion.

Then come the ecstasy takers. They order from the cafe owner a small bag of ecstasy tablets. They spend the afternoon telling each other how much they love one another while drinking loads of water and dancing to music on a stereo with a weird repetitive drum beat.

Very soon, the whole cafe is off its nuts and is in chaos. A child has had his foot punctured by a discarded needle by one of the heroin addicts and has contracted HIV. The children and the families have left, never to return and because he's making more money than he's ever known what to do with, the manger has turned into a nightclub by the next month, yet, for some reason, despite the wholesale acceptance of drugs, the heroin addicts are still despised because they steal everything in sight to accommodate their habit and are banned.

Extrapolate the cafe to the whole of society and that is what you have in the event of the legalisation of all drugs.