STRAW'S BELIEF IN CANNABIS 'DANGER' IGNORES DRUG'S PROVEN MEDICAL USES

With reference to your article 'Straw bows to cannabis call' (News, January
4), I doubt that Jack Straw will bow very far. He is an experienced and
skilled practitioner of the art of politics. He contrives to give the
impression that he is yielding while holding fast to his ideological position.

This becomes clear if one pauses a moment to consider the devious use of
language in his closing statements: "If drug companies and pressure groups
can come forward and say, first, that it [marijuana] has medical
therapeutic uses, let them do so. If they can prove that this drug is not
[narcotic and dangerous], of course we will have to think about it again."

The trick here, of course, is to get the opposition to prove a negative.
Why, one might well ask, would any drug company want to do that? Why would
they want to lay out huge sums of money to prove that a herb that grows
wild has "medical therapeutic uses" when so doing would mean that they
would lose most of the customers for the expensive synthetic substitutes
that they have already put on the market?

As for proving that it is not "narcotic and dangerous", the British
government assembled a team of medical and other experts to study the use
and abuse of marijuana in India in 1894. The report published by this
committee after a 12- month investigation found exactly that, and one
should note in passing, that marijuana has been used by the majority of the
working population for hundreds of years in various parts of India to ward
of the effects of fatigue. (I can vouch for that from personal experience:
I spent three years there from 1942-45.)

There have been many similar reports published since, seven of which were
summed up, on November 13, 1997, by Judge John McCart.

He said he had been persuaded by the evidence laid before him that
marijuana was "comparatively harmless" next to the so-called hard drugs
including nicotine and alcohol; that it was not addicitve or demotivational
and should not be considered as a 'gateway' drug.

Let Jack Straw continue his posturing. Your readers, I'm sure, will make
the right connection.

Verily, there are none so blind...

Pat Dolan, Vancouver