Drugs policy: Let the qat out of the ban "ABYSSINIAN tea" they sometimes call the leafy plant chewed or brewed for centuries in the Horn of Africa and Yemen. Qat spread to the West with refugees and migrants from the region, notably Somalis. Over half of EU countries, as well as the United States and Canada, ban the stimulant, a sort of mild amphetamine. But attempts to do so in Britain, most recently in 2005, left experts unconvinced that the stuff was so harmful to mind, body or society that dealing in it should be made a crime. Thinking may now be changing. Over 58 tonnes of qat are flown into Britain each week. A lively suitcase trade bears some away for illicit sale in other countries. The rest is distributed to corner stores, kebab shops and above all mafrishi in cities where Somalis, Yemenis and Ethiopians have settled. Men hunker down in these dimly lit qat cafés, parking a fat leafy wad in their cheeks, listen to Somali music, watch football or Al Jazeera news, and talk. It is a cheap high: a bundle costs between £3 ($4.75) and £5, and two would make a heavy night. The legal trade in qat earns money for people who might otherwise fail to find a job, and produced £2.9m in VAT receipts in 2010. But qat is controversial. Two of its active ingredients - cathinone and cathine - are classified drugs in their own right. Though just 0.2% of the wider population use it, a good third of Britain's 100,000-plus Somalis do - more, if only men are counted. Some Somalis see qat as a cultural glue holding the community together, others as a blight destroying families by keeping men out of the home, the mosque and the job market. There may be little strong evidence that qat is truly addictive or harmful, except to those who already have problems. But given the number of Somalis who arrive poor, unskilled, shellshocked and unable to speak English, there are plenty of people in that category. The previous, multiculture-minded Labour government hesitated to classify qat, in part because it seemed to impose the values of the majority on a minority. Yet that hesitation could be seen as a kind of discrimination, suggests Paul Griffiths of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction: the powers-that-be couldn't be bothered to control a drug that affected only a small group of outsiders. Three things are different now. First, the Netherlands, which like Britain permitted free trade in the stuff, announced in January that it was banning qat. One likely reason is that Germany and Sweden, where qat is illegal, had tired of seizing it en route from the Netherlands and had put pressure on The Hague. As Europe's sole big distribution hub, Britain will be heavily leaned on too. In Parliament this week Mark Lancaster, a Conservative MP with Somali constituents, drew attention to Britain's growing isolation. Second, the Tories have qat in their sights. In 2008 Lady (Sayeeda) Warsi, now co-chairman of the Conservative Party, promised that the Tories would ban it if they came to power, and the government has asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to look at the leaf again. The Tories have reason to take the concerns of ethnic-minority groups seriously, given their lack of support among them (see Bagehot). Taking a stand against qat would please at least some Muslims. Finally, Somalis are campaigning harder against qat. It was once seen mainly as a women's issue, a coded protest against continued male dominance in a new world which women negotiated better than their menfolk. The campaign now seems to have more heft, says one MP, and certainly more men, including the likes of Abukar Awaleh, a former qat-chewer from Brent. A rally outside Number 10 in February drew support, and not a week goes by without some local paper sounding off. Is banning qat the right move? Probably not. It has not broken into the mainstream. Perhaps, like younger Somalis, Britons who want to get high don't fancy chewing a mouth full of leaves when they can score some neat, cheap mephedrone. Criminalising an accepted practice is often risky: in this case, it could encourage sellers to include harder drugs with their now-illegal offering, suggests Axel Klein of Kent University. Higher qat prices might cause a switch to more harmful alternatives. But regulating the trade in qat, like alcohol and tobacco, is another matter. The leaf varies in quality and freshness, and can be dangerously dosed with pesticides. The Australian state of Victoria licenses sellers, performing spot-checks to keep up quality. Tightening up in this way should please anti-drug Tories and Somali voters too. An easy win for David Cameron?