LAW ON CANNABIS

London

(ENI) - A senior Church of England bishop, John Oliver, has supported a
growing movement in Britain to relax the law against using cannabis.

Bishop Oliver said the law against the use of cannabis had become
unenforceable and police energies would be better directed to the fight
against hard drugs.

Bishop Oliver is the bishop of Hereford, an area of north-west England that
attracted world-wide publicity in March with shock pictures of a dead
21-year-old heroin addict, Rachel Whitear. With the permission of her
family, health authorities released the pictures, including one of the
corpse holding a syringe, in a bid to deter others from taking hard drugs.

The bishop called for more education to persuade cannabis users not to
switch to harder drugs. He said that it is not good to be on cannabis,
which is not a harmless drug. However, he added that cannabis isn't always
a gateway to hard drugs.

The 67-year-old bishop, who said he had never smoked cannabis, described
himself as "reluctantly in agreement" with the campaign to relax the law.