Letter: Illegal Cannabis
Feeds Child Use
Source: The Sentinel
Date: January 28 2008
Author: Dilys Wood
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Modern life can be stressful, difficult and often painful. What one uses
to ease this, be it food, prescription drugs, tobacco, alcohol or cannabis,
should be of no concern to others. Most of the "crutches" used by
adults are harmful to some degree, certainly none of the things I've listed are
harmless, and yet only cannabis is illegal. Researchers have suggested that if
alcohol were classified alongside illegal drugs, it would be in Class A along
with cocaine and heroin. In the light of this, surely the Government will be
looking into making alcohol illegal for the sake of the nation's health? No, of
course not. It is right to question a society where one drug, which directly
kills more than 20,000 people a year and indirectly kills tens of thousands of
others is legal, and another with no recorded direct fatalities is illegal.
This is the hypocrisy I referred to in my letter 'Cannabis must be made legal',
The Sentinel, December 3. I have enjoyed reading the ensuing debate, but I
object strongly to suggestions that, because of my stance on cannabis
legalisation, I don't care about children. The speech I delivered at the LCA
conference last year was entitled Cannabis And Children, and in researching
this speech I found reports of children as young as six smoking cannabis.
I also found an Australian study which suggested how cannabis - indeed any
intoxicant - use by teens can adversely affect their development of social
skills and emotional stability.
Are we educating our children about drug use?
No, we spend far, far more on criminalisation than we do on education and
research. This has got to change. Both the Government and the EU Drug Agency
have reported a reduction in cannabis use by young people since
reclassification to C, and yet they are currently reviewing whether to revert
to Class B. The fact that cannabis is illegal makes it accessible to children.
There have been some tragic stories recounted in the responses to my letter,
but what the writers fail to comprehend is that all these tragedies happened
under the existing system. My reaction to anyone who blames cannabis for their
problems is to ask how the current system helped or protected them. The answer
is that it didn't and can't. If you're satisfied with this system, you must
accept the criminal supply and control of all illegal drugs, a global trade
second only to oil.
The only way to take illegal drugs out of the hands of criminals, off the
streets and therefore away from children, is to legalise and regulate,
diverting the effort currently made to criminalise into educating our children
about the dangers of all drugs.
DILYS WOOD Legalise Cannabis Alliance
Stoke-on-Trent
Comment: http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/ click on News, then Letters
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