Source: Evening News, Norwich

Pub Date: January 8 1998

Pub LTE: Evidence supports legalisation

EVIDENCE SUPPORTS LEGALISATION

So the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, is saying that if legalise cannabis campaigners can show that cannabis is not a dangerous drug then the Government may reconsider its stance on prohibition.

Strangely enough though, the evidence has always been there. In 1968 the UK Royal Commission, the Wootton Report, concurring with other major reports on cannabis, said that cannabis ought not to be illegal and its use did not pose unacceptable risks.

Since then other reports have concluded that cannabis is not addictive, does not lead to hard drug use, detrimentally effect memory or motor skills, and does not cause cancer. The British medical journal The Lancet (November 1995) said "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health."

The US Drug Enforcement Agency's own investigative judge, Francis Young (1988), concluded that cannabis is safer than most common vegetables.

The evidence has been there for some time, ignored by successive governments as they ignore the many acclaimed benefits of smoking cannabis to many people.

Maybe the arrest of Jack Straw's son has achieved something after all. Maybe now people will wake up to the fact that this unjust and unworkable law may eventually lead to the arrest of their own sons and daughters, for using a safe plant in preference to dangerous intoxicants.

Maybe 1998 will see the start of the most positive step this Government could make towards healing society - the legalisation of cannabis.

Jack Girling

Norwich