Cannabis culture arrives in Britain by the back door

While inner-city cafes that allow covert smoking of cannabis escape prosecution, confrontational tactics attract police attention

The secluded lounge area is beginning to thicken with the sweet smell of sinsemilla at Café Cairo in Brixton, south London. Reclined among the Egyptian cushions soon after 7pm, a dozen or so people chat, listen to the soft vibes emanating from the DJ booth or craft a fresh joint on the low-slung tables.

To a passer-by the café appears little more than a thriving business selling coffee, juice and vegetarian snacks to a young crowd in this mainly working-class area of Lambeth. But it has become the archetype for a growing number of cannabis-tolerant cafés, bars and clubs in metropolitan areas across Britain.

While the debate continues to rage over the Government's reclassification of cannabis and the Lambeth experiment to cease arrests for possession, the patrons and owners of cannabis-tolerant cafés are wondering what all the fuss is about.

David Lodge, who opened Café Cairo five years ago, said: "I suppose I could be busted at anytime, but somehow it never happens. I can only think that the police have an order from on high that we should stay open. I think they probably view us as a kind of experiment." Although there are no drugs for sale on the premises, Café Cairo risks being shut on the basis of a 16th-century anti-prostitution law that prohibits a "house of ill-repute". But in common with the policing of brothels nationwide, the authorities in Lambeth appear to have turned a blind eye.

The café's customers appreciate the convenience of the adjacent Greenleaf "grocery store", which Mr Lodge estimates makes £20,000 a week selling grass from a back room to a mainly white, middle-class clientele. A man aged 32 with a stake in the business said they were tolerated by police provided they kept Landor Road, a mainly residential area, free of dealers.

Constantly watching for rival dealers, the man said: "If the neighbours don't complain then the police are not interested. They bust us occasionally but I think that is because of the political pressure building up. The next bust is going to be big."

The alcohol-free café opens from 4pm to 1am and is frequented by a mixture of people of Arab origin, drawn by the traditional drinks and food menu and Arabic television, and career people including doctors, barristers and not a few police officers. Mr Lodge claims it has been the local of choice of several MPs' sons.

Mr Lodge does not advertise the café and the discreet, black-painted shopfront is free of the cannabis leaves or rastafarian colours that typically adorn Dutch-style coffee shops. In a further sop to the authorities, Mr Lodge felt obliged towards the end of the one-year Lambeth experiment to stick up a few token "No Drugs" posters near the entrance – but that rule is instantly revealed to be defied. The owners of such establishments appreciate that they are unlikely to win explicit approval from police forces so they simply open a café and insist to newcomers they do not permit smoking, while allowing the regulars to do exactly that.

One cannabis entrepreneur who recently met Michael Fuller, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner and the head of the Metropolitan Police's drugs directorate, and Derek Benson, the divisional police chief for Hackney, was told that, while stopping cannabis offences was not a priority, he would be arrested for opening a coffee shop. Others have learnt that the way to success is through subtlety and steering clear of selling drugs.

For example Café 1001 in Brick Lane, east London, introduced a separate smokers' room two years ago without a bat of an eyelid from the local authorities. Leonor, the night-time manager, said: "When people come in and ask if they can smoke we say 'no' but it has been allowed for about two years now." Asked whether the cafe had attracted the attention of either the Metropolitan Police or Tower Hamlets council, she shrugged and said: "Nothing". Such low-profile tactics have ensured the survival of up to 30 cannabis-friendly cafés and bars in London, the majority in liberal Lambeth but others in Lewisham, Camden, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Although many café and bar owners prefer not to publicise their enterprises, there is no shortage of places to smoke in Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester and Liverpool – to name a few.

David Crane, a cannabis campaigner planning to open an upmarket coffee shop in north London, said: "Reclassification is a fact of life in most metropolitan areas of Britain. The reason I want to set up a coffee shop is to meet new people and make cannabis smoking more sociable. It's as harmless as that." The subtle approach could hardly be more different to the Dutch-style "coffee shops" in Stockport and Bournemouth that have been closed and their owners arrested. Earlier this week the controversy surrounding Britain's first coffee shop, the Dutch Experience in Stockport, deepened with the arrest for alleged perjury of the elderly father of the campaigner Colin Davies, who is in prison for drug offences.

The same confrontational approach by cannabis campaigners, possibly carried away by the pace of change in the past 12 months, has seen plans falter for openings in north Wales, Edinburgh and Leeds. Many of those who attended a course in Haarlem, the Netherlands, this year on opening a coffee shop have returned to stiff resistance.

Getting high - the law in Europe

Amsterdam

The Netherlands has been in the vanguard of change in drug policy in Europe. In 1972 the first coffee shop selling cannabis opened in Amsterdam and there are now about 120 such establishments. Owners risk losing their licence if they sell to under-18s or keep more than 500g (18oz) of the drug on the premises. Cannabis is illegal although, in effect, decriminalised.

Copenhagen

Tens of thousands of tourists flock each year to buy and smoke cannabis in the quasi-autonomous city of Christiania, which was set up in 1971. Hard drugs have been banned but there is a lucrative cannabis trade, mainly from Swedish teenagers who visit to smoke in the notorious Pushers Street.

Berlin

Smoking cannabis in bars, cafés and even on the streets is tolerated and in most cases is ignored by the police. There are several "headshops", but no obvious coffee shops selling the drug. In northern Germany, courts have been dismissing charges against people carrying small quantities of soft drugs.