ILLEGAL CANNABIS FEEDS CHILD USE

Modern life can be stressful, difficult and often painful. What
one uses to ease this, be it food, prescription drugs, tobacco,
alcohol or cannabis, should be of no concern to others. Most of the
"crutches" used by adults are harmful to some degree, certainly none
of the things I've listed are harmless, and yet only cannabis is
illegal. Researchers have suggested that if alcohol were classified
alongside illegal drugs, it would be in Class A along with cocaine and
heroin. In the light of this, surely the Government will be looking
into making alcohol illegal for the sake of the nation's health? No,
of course not.It is right to question a society where one drug, which
directly kills more than 20,000 people a year and indirectly kills
tens of thousands of others is legal, and another with no recorded
direct fatalities is illegal. This is the hypocrisy I referred to in
my letter 'Cannabis must be made legal', The Sentinel, December 3. I
have enjoyed reading the ensuing debate, but I object strongly to
suggestions that, because of my stance on cannabis legalisation, I
don't care about children. The speech I delivered at the LCA
conference last year was entitled Cannabis And Children, and in
researching this speech I found reports of children as young as six
smoking cannabis.

I also found an Australian study which suggested how cannabis - indeed
any intoxicant - use by teens can adversely affect their development
of social skills and emotional stability.

Are we educating our children about drug use?

No, we spend far, far more on criminalisation than we do on education
and research. This has got to change. Both the Government and the EU
Drug Agency have reported a reduction in cannabis use by young people
since reclassification to C, and yet they are currently reviewing
whether to revert to Class B. The fact that cannabis is illegal makes
it accessible to children. There have been some tragic stories
recounted in the responses to my letter, but what the writers fail to
comprehend is that all these tragedies happened under the existing
system. My reaction to anyone who blames cannabis for their problems
is to ask how the current system helped or protected them. The answer
is that it didn't and can't. If you're satisfied with this system, you
must accept the criminal supply and control of all illegal drugs, a
global trade second only to oil.

The only way to take illegal drugs out of the hands of criminals, off
the streets and therefore away from children, is to legalise and
regulate, diverting the effort currently made to criminalise into
educating our children about the dangers of all drugs.

Dilys Wood

Legalise Cannabis Alliance

Stoke-on-Trent