CANNABIS PROHIBITION NOT NECESSARY

YOUR EDITORIAL, "Setting the standard" ( ODT , 26.1.01) lowers the
calibre of debate emerging from the cannabis prohibitionists even
further. Your call for the removal of Laila Harre as Minister of
Youth Affairs was a knee-jerk over-reaction. Rather than
condemnation, she deserves praise for seeing that prohibition is
actually the problem. Instead, you employ paradoxical arguments and
misuse statistics in an attempt to support your "dead duck"
prohibition. Worst of all, however, you distort a lesson from history
that, ironically, proves Ms Harre right.

China did have a problem with opium, as a result of British exports
from India. International pressure eventually forced Britain to
curtail this trade. The opium lobby protested that if opium was to be
controlled then so should the more dangerous drug, cannabis.
Consequently the British Government established the Indian Hemp Drugs
Commission in 1893 to investigate the problem. Testimony was heard
from 1193 witnesses including magistrates, doctors, civil servants
and, no doubt, newspaper editors and school principals. The consensus
was that hemp drugs caused addiction, laziness, crime and insanity.
One group, however, was reluctant to testify as they claimed no
knowledge of the problem: the missionaries. This intrigued the
commissioners because the missionaries lived closely with Indian
society, and had also been in the vanguard against opium use.

Upon closer examination of the "problem" the commission discovered
that the use of hemp drugs was a widespread and integral part of
Indian society. Upon careful examination of public records it was
found that hemp drugs were not addictive, and caused neither crime
nor insanity. In its report, the commission expressed astonishment at
the "defective and misleading" recollections of many of its "expert"
witnesses. The commission's conclusion was that cannabis prohibition
was not necessary, would be too injurious to Indian society, and
might increase the use of more troublesome drugs like alcohol and
opium.

Jason Baker-Sherman, Dalmore