CANNABIS ALSO MEDICINE AND HEALTH FOOD

HOW IRONIC you should make Dick Taylor's reassurance that exercise was not
the cause of his heart problem, front-page news ( ODT , 17.3.01), while my
letter (5.4.01) offering a plausible explanation, the consumption of
non-foods like margarine, and a possible solution, the eating of hemp seed,
was relegated to the back of the paper, when it was eventually published.

Being athletes, Mr Taylor (52) and his two late colleagues (47 and 51) were
obviously fit and probably followed the dietary advice currently en vogue,
but still they suffered a now-common disease that was virtually unknown 100
years ago.

In 1950, Albert Einstein told the American Medical Association, "You look
like scientists, you talk like scientists, you use scientific methods but
you are not scientists".

This is especially true of today's scientists and their research, when
funding is provided by businesses who will obviously want a financial
return on their "investment".

Einstein also believed that no problem could be solved by the consciousness
that created it.

Thus modern health science with its emphasis on synthetic foods and
medicines, expensive treatments and genetic engineering will not cure
"modern" disease but instead exacerbate it.

The cannabis plant, on the other hand, has served the human race very well
for many millennia.

Not only is it a relatively safe recreational drug, cannabis is also a
medicine and health food, and can provide natural alternatives to many of
the toxic substances with which we endanger our health.

Jason Baker-Sherman, Dalmore

[Abridged. - Ed.]