Source: Letter in East Anglian Daily Times, UK

Date: 8 January 1998

Author: Jack Girling

CANNABIS HAS BEEN PROVED HARMLESS

 Jack Straw, the Home secretary, has invited legalise cannabis campaigners to prove that the plant is "safe", while citing his own anecdotal evidence that drugs had turned writer Toby Young into a zombie, as he quoted from The Spectator.

It seems strange that Mr Straw now seems uncertain if cannabis is dangerous or not, and obviously conceded that campaigners have a chance.

However, it is surely simply a matter of referring to the many reports from various Government-sponsored researchers.

Since the British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in 1896, to the UK Royal Commission of 1968 and the DEA report of Judge Francis Young in 1988, it has been known and stated that any danger associated with cannabis use did not justify prohibition.

More recently Professor Lester Grinspoon (October 1997), of Harvard Medical School, had declared cannabis as "remarkably safe" and scientists at UCLA Medical College and others have determined that cannabis-smoking does not cause cancer or destroy health.

The reports are too numerous to mention here, Mr Straw, but you have been sent (in September 1997) a letter containing exact references and quotes. Anyone actually taking the time to study these reports can reach only one conclusion. All the alleged harm due to cannabis use is myth.

However, the harm done to millions of individuals and society by prohibition and prosecution, as well as any fund-raising crime committed to pay high prices of a plant which could be grown at home if legal, is untold.

The stress that Mr Straw and his family are feeling after the arrest of his son is doubtless no less than that felt by very many thousands of people who have been arrested, searched and taken to court for the same - a crime without a victim. We sympathise with him and hope he sympathises with us.

Yours sincerely,

Jack Girling

Campaign to Legalise Cannabis International Association

Peacock Street

Norwich