Section: On-line letters extra

URL: http://www.observer.co.uk/drugs/story/0,11908,780560,00.html

Pub Date: Sunday, 25 August 2002

Pub LTE: It's the cannabis ban that is dangerous

Authors: Alun Buffry

IT'S THE CANNABIS BAN THAT IS DANGEROUS

I would like to challenge Miss Greenfield to prove that my reason has been permanently damaged (or even temporarily). I have been smoking cannabis for over 30 years - sometimes in copious amounts - during which time I have graduated in Chemistry, written several books that have been published as well as a large number of published letters, obtained a diploma in computing and authored several major web sites. I have also been to prison for cannabis where there was also plenty to smoke and where I worked for charity fund-raising and organized fun days for well over 2000 mentally disadvantaged people.

My reasoning is quite simply: the effects of cannabis on an individual are a matter of health, not law. By continuing to criminalise the production (at home) and supply of the plant to the many millions of users who do use it to no harmful effect does nobody any good.

I would also like to make my own claim: that locking oneself away in a laboratory at a University is likely to permanently damage one's thought processes far more than cannabis.

Alun Buffry