REGULATE CANNABIS

Sir: Home Secretary David Blunkett's endorsement of a police plan involving
the decriminalisation of minor cannabis offences (report, 25 June) is a step in
the right direction, but the proposed use of cautions will do nothing to
undermine the youth-oriented black market in illegal drugs.

The thriving black market has no age controls, making it easier for
kids to buy cannabis than beer. Although cannabis is relatively
harmless compared to most drugs - the plant has never been shown to
cause an overdose death - cannabis prohibition is deadly. Illegal
cannabis provides the black market contacts that introduce youth to
addictive drugs like heroin.

Like alcohol prohibition once did in the United States, cannabis
prohibition subsidises organised crime, while failing miserably at
preventing use. Decriminalisation acknowledges the social reality of
cannabis use and frees users from the stigma of life-shattering
criminal records.

What's really needed is a regulated market with age controls. As
counterintuitive as it may seem, replacing cannabis prohibition with
regulation would do a better job protecting children than the
never-ending drug war.

Robert Sharpe,
Program Officer,
The Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation,
Washington DC