IT'S TIME TO WEED OUT GREEDY FUEL COMPANIES

People are so dissatisfied with the price of fuel they are blocking
progress on the roads and at oil terminals. For many year we have been at
the mercy of suppliers of dangerous and environmentally polluting fuel,
coal, gas and oil and nuclear power. The supply of these fuels is in the
hands of rich people who ensure high prices and provide the Government in
revenue through taxation. But it is we, the people, who pay through the
nose in more ways than one.

However, plants are an excellent alternative fuel source that can be
converted into alcohol and used to provide fuel for our vehicles.

A woody plant that can be grown quickly and easily without the necessity of
fertilisers or pesticides would be ideal. Even better if the plant
produced a commercially viable fruit that had other usages so that the
plant material used to make the fuel could be produced virtually free.

When burned, that fuel would release almost the same amounts of carbon
dioxide and water as are absorbed during the growing season, but not
dangerous pollutants. And if it could be produced at a local level it
would grant us independence from the petrochemical industries.

There is an ideal plant. It has been calculated that it could be grown in
the UK and elsewhere to produce vast amounts of fuel. Unfortunately it is
illegal, because the Government has deemed it undesirable that people
should get "high".

The plant is cannabis.

So long as cannabis remains illegal the ideal source of fuel is unusable
and economically unviable. If it becomes legal, the parts people smoke
will generate enough income to enable us to have virtually cost-free and
pollution-free fuel.

That is the demand that we should now be making. It is based upon
scientific facts and sound economics, not political bias or false morality,
and it would favour the people, not the Government and industry.

Alun Buffry