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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Letter: Why cannabis must be legalised now
Alun Buffry Irish Independent
Friday 31 Oct 1997 In a 'name and address supplied' letter which you published on October 23, (Legalising 'pot' a dangerous move) the writer tells of his/her taking LSD after cannabis, in an argument against the legalisation of the latter. Now it is time to consider the plain truth. It is an indisputable fact that some people take cannabis and later take hard drugs, as it is that some people use water pistols and later become armed robbers. But that is no reason to punish cannabis users any more than it would be a reason to punish children with water pistols; neither are hurting anyone, not even themselves. The truth is it is people who lead other people to do things; in a society where drugs are prohibited and often all available from he same place, it is not unusual for the dealer to wish to boost illegal profits by introducing other substances. That is the 'fault' of the dealer and the law, not of the cannabis plant itself. Cannabis has been proclaimed safe by everybody from the Lancet to the American DEA judge Young, from Professor Lester Grinspoon of Harvard University to the UK's own 1968 Wootton Report. So why this continued pretence that its prohibition is to protect people? The truth is that the continued illegality of cannabis enables huge profits to be made by the companies making synthetic and polluting alternatives to the many uses of the plant - fuel, relaxant, medicine, fibre, paper, furniture, etc. If cannabis is ever legalised, many profits may fall. It is high time that investigative journalists examined the details of events leading up to the inclusion of cannabis in the Opiates Convention in 1925 and subsequent prohibition. Alun Buffry, B.Sc., Norwich,
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