At some point or other we’ve all wondered into a house party only to see Michael Phelps slumped in a corner taking a ‘ripple’ on a so-called ‘bong’. In the same vein several of my peers have reliably informed me that on occasion their friends have tried to friend-pressure them into taking “one of the ones that looks like a Super Ted vitamin tablet; it’ll make you enjoy the minimalist house DJ who’s on next”. And, I for one watched ‘Trainspotting’, and thought that the whole drug cultsha scene looked like some darn goood sheeet. Admit it, we’ve all been there.

Now it’s the Government’s turn to flirt with the idea of indulging in the act of a little drug-snuggling of its own, thanks to the brutal cost-benefit analysis by some progressive sorts in the Home Office.

One number-bod with the smarts has made some quick back-of-a-fag-packet calculations and come up with a figure amounting what the UK Plc could save per annum, if drugs were to be legalised. That “probably well accurate” figure stands at £11 billion – most of which is currently spent on breeding sniffer dogs and carrying out on-the-spot piss tests for anybody whose pupils look anything like liquorise allsorts.

Just think of the possibilities… with that sort of spare change in the Chancellor’s coffers we could have afforded to have given Jade “the Essex Princess” Goody a state funeral, scheduled in the red arrows for an aerial display – in which they could have spelt out the words ‘Live East, Die Young’ with smoke plumes in the sky, and still have had enough change for an off-peak overground single back to Dagenham.

This cold, hard, ‘impact assesment’ on drugs marks a paradigm shift in government  policy – which at present involves tatooing the word ‘F.R.A.N.K. on the foreheads of those caught in possession of more than a gram of the ‘dummy-dust’, or more than 7 ‘forget-me pills’.

The government is toying new drug legalisation legislation that would come under the umbrella policy package known simply to all of Thatcher’s Children as “let the people scratch that itch”.

The move comes after a really important government report was filed, stating: “The legalisation of drugs would definitely eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such crims would definitely not seek new sources of illicit revenue through other forms of crime.”

The in-depth three-quarters of a page report added: “Despite popular belief heroin and/or crack-cocaine users do not cause harm to the health and social functionaing of society, or to themselves; but they do have to commit substantial amounts of crime to fund the posions they pick to enjoy this life (costing £16bn a year).”

“It’s simple smackroeconomics,” said a governemnt source. If drugs are gonna stimulate people’s senses we may as well let them provide some stimulus to the economy.