Source: Mid Essex Evening Gazette

Pub Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2000

Published letter: Fuel Price Crisis

Author: Alun Buffry

Clearly some people are so dissatisfied with the price of fuel they are blocking progress on the roads and at oil terminals.

For many years we have been at the mercy of suppliers of dangerous and environmentally-polluting fuel - coal, gas, and oil and nuclear power.

Biomass is an excellent source as it can be converted easily into alcohol and used to produce fuel for our vehicles, homes and even jet planes. A woody plant that can be grown quickly and easily without the necessity of fertilisers or pesticides would be ideal. Even better if the plant produced a commercially viable fruit that had benefits us in other ways, so that the plant material used to make the fuel becomes virtually free.

When burned that fuel would release almost the same amounts of carbon dioxide and water as absorbed during the growing season - no dangerous pollutants.

And what if it could be produced on local level giving us some independence from the petrochemical and nuclear industries?

There is an ideal plant. It has been calculated that it could be grown in the UK and elsewhere to produce vast amounts of fuel.

The plant is cannabis.

Unfortunately it is illegal, not because it is so dangerous as to be so undesirable but because the government has deemed it undesirable that people should get "high".

We should be demanding legalisation base on scientific facts and sound economics, not political bias or false

morality,

sincerely,

Alun Buffry

(Nominating Officer)

Legalise Cannabis Alliance

Norwich