Source: Letter, Evening News, Norwich

Date: 22 July 1996

Author: Alun Buffry

RECENT letters in the Evening News echo the long-running debate on whether or not cannabis should be legalised.

The arguments have been far ranging, from freedom of choice to therapeutic values (now undeniable). However, the essential question has so often been missed.

What we should ask is: irrespective of whether cannabis is of medical or ecological value or whether cannabis users are ill or simply degenerate, should cannabis users be fined, imprisoned or punished in any way at all?

Bearing in mind that the medical opinion as expressed in The Lancet in November 1995 is: "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health," is it not time we started asking why hundreds of millions of pounds has been spent by the Government on an anti-drugs campaign that resulted in over 72,000 arrests for cannabis in 1994, 83 per cent of the total arrests for drug offences that year?

Over 72,000 UK people were punished for a crime without a victim - not even the users themselves are harmed.

Alun Buffry

Helena Road

Norwich