Source: Letter in Evening News, Norwich

Date: 30 May 1992

Author: Jack Girling

WE read with interest the letter from Mrs C Smith (May 20).

Her suggestion that cannabis could be used to help feed the Third World is very feasible. This is one of the many possible uses of cannabis which our governments seem to continually ignore.

Cannabis as a plant has many other possible uses. The cannabis plant has the most efficacious photosynthesising biomass on the planet.

Everything you can make out of petroleum can be made out of cannabis, causing less pollution, and counteracting the greenhouse effect.

Cannabis can be used as a fuel, to make dioxin-free paper and thus saving trees, as well as for making rope.

A crop of cannabis can be produced almost anywhere at least twice a year. And yet the petroleum companies continue to make huge profits at an ecologically disastrous cost.

Likewise the pharmaceutical companies continue to ignore the therapeutic properties of the cannabis plant, which has been used in the treatment of many ailments since the Chinese Emperor Shen-Nung 5000 years ago.

These uses include treatment for glaucoma, asthma, arthritis and the depressions caused by anti-cancer drugs. Cannabis contains no less than 60 therapeutic healing sub-stances.

The consumption of cannabis in small doses produces a mild relaxing effect, less addictive and probably far less harmful than many present day prescribed chemical drugs.

And yet the use of cannabis is an imprisonable offence and the offence of supply has a maximum sentence ₉f 14 years!

Cannabis, in short, could be used to help sort out many of the problems we read about in our present day world.

Our leaders remain silent on this topic, although they have certainly been made aware of all this. Maybe the good reader would consider writing direct to local MPs to ask why.

Jack Girling, Peacock Street, Norwich.