THE BIG ISSUE: CANNABIS CONUNDRUM

Drugs and Achievement

My 30 years as a teacher has convinced me of a clear link between
cannabis use and underachievement in school students. Forty years on
from being a teenager in the 1960s, I am led to a similar conclusion
regarding cannabis use and the making of wise decisions affecting a
wide range of personal life outcomes.

Roger Titcombe Ulverston, Cumbria

Cristine Odone's article reminded me of Chris Morris in the drugs
episode of his brilliant satirical Brass Eye television series.

In this programme he says, with his tongue firmly in his cheek: 'I
can take drugs without any problems but what about other people less
stable, less educated, less middle class than me. Builders or blacks
for example.

'If you're one of those then my advice is to leave well alone.'

Alan Kerr
Bidford-on-Avon, Warks

In Euan Ferguson's piece about 'the reluctant revolutionary'
(Interview, last week), Charles Moore said that 'people really need
to think' about the 'distinction between disapproving of something
and saying it must be banned', with reference to the fox-hunting
debate.

He compared hunting to cannabis use and suggested that legalisation
of one must, logically, support the other.

Yet Moore misses the fact that campaigns to legalise cannabis want to
let adults abuse themselves - while hunting abuses animals. Despite
wearing libertarian clothes, he has forgotten J.S. Mill's golden
'harm to others' principle.

While Mr Moore is free to argue over whether a fox constitutes an
'other', he ought not to generalise with morally separate dilemmas.
It is not simply a 'tabloid view' of social and ethical questions to
distinguish between things we do to ourselves and things we do to
others.

Richard Huzzey
Bromsgrove, Worcs

Being against drugs, as some black leaders are, should not mean that
they want them to be prohibited by law.

Banning drugs is the best way to ensure that the users of those drugs
suffer severe negative consequences. If the adulterated drugs don't
kill you, the cops will roust your black ass into jail.

Alan Randell
Victoria, BC
Canada