Cannabis As a Medicine

Sir, Martin Cooke (October 13th) took issue with me about uses of
cannabis. My motion, carried nem. con. at the recent Annual General Meeting
of the Association of General Practitioners, was "That this association is
of the opinion that cannabis and its products have not any unique medical
use". He said that "international [Does he mean "foreign"?] research"
refutes my statement that it had long been recognised that the use of
cannabis led to addiction and stronger drugs, and that there was no
evidence to support the belief that the use of one drug would inevitably
lead to the use of any other drug. There is evidence that the use of
cannabis does, in many cases, lead on to the use of more harmful drugs. I
did not use the word, "inevitably".

Martin Cooke suspects that I assume that the medical use of marijuana would
require legalisation for "recreational" use. I thank him for his
patronising minilecture about that. He went on to say that "marijuana has
never caused a fatal response", and he purported to quote support from The
Lancet. He did not say that the quotation had editorial approval. The
inhalation of fumes from burning marijuana, or any other vegetable matter,
is likely to do damage of kinds comparable with tobacco, which kills.

Martin Cooke stated that I said that it was a big lie that marijuana was
useful in the treatment of certain diseases, but he carefully omitted my
qualification, "which conventional medicine cannot deal with". Yours, etc.,

S. Ua CONCHUBHAIR, Uarán Mór, Gaillimh.