Letter: CONTROVERSY OVER SMOKE BAN APPLIES TO CANNABIS USERS
Source: The Sentinel, Stoke-on-Trent
Date :
July 15 2008
Author;
Dilys Wood
One year on from the introduction of the smoking ban and
once again John Abberley uses his column to defend smokers' rights: 'Smoke ban
has seen decent adults treated like criminals' (The Sentinel, July 4).I
couldn't agree more John, but once again I feel compelled to point out the
comparison with cannabis use.
There is, of course, a significant difference between
tobacco and cannabis use; tobacco kills over 10,000 people a year in the UK
alone, but no-one has yet died solely due to cannabis use, despite Gordon
Brown's misinformed (and indeed illiterate) comment that modern day cannabis is
"more lethal"!
Wherever cannabis has been cited on a death certificate,
there have invariably been other drugs or factors involved. I understand that
our politicians can't know everything about everything, which is why we pay for
committees and advisory bodies of experts.
The Government has chosen to ignore its drugs advisory
body and reclassify cannabis to Class B to "send a message to young
people".
The reality of this is decent adults not only treated like
criminals, but actually criminalised and prosecuted.
Possession of a Class B drug carries a maximum sentence of
five years in prison. The maximum sentence for carrying a knife has just been
increased to four years.
What message does this send to young people when knife
crime has apparently taken over from terrorism as our biggest security threat?
Millions of adults in the UK regularly use cannabis
recreationally or medicinally, the demand is enormous. Hence we see police
busting cannabis growers with the same regularity as American cops busted
'speakeasies'.
I expect that, in this era of politicians trying to
dictate how we live our lives, the majority of people, smokers or not, would
agree with John Abberley. I find it hard to understand why people can't see
that the same applies to cannabis. To misquote John's final paragraph:
"There's nothing more depressing than the sight of kids of 12 and 13
smoking cannabis. And here's an alarming statistic: one in 10 kids under 16
have tried cannabis. I can't think of a better way of promoting health than by
tackling this serious problem, instead of turning decent adults who use
cannabis into criminals."
DILYS WOOD Stoke
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