Sir, I welcome cautiously the British Medical Association's vote
that cannabis derivatives should be allowed to be prescribed. The
details of the proposals, though, need careful scrutiny. For millenia,
socalled "primitive" cultures have recognised the many health benifits
obtainable through cannabis. Its uses are by no means confined to pain
killing.

No doubt many more applications of this remarkable plant could be
discovered if research focused on, say, those areas of India where
the customs handed down through the ages are nowhere near being
eradicated. I don't think this is what multinational pharmaceutical
interests have in mind though, and I call for an undertaking that any
medical research or use of synthetic marijuana will not involve the
absorbtion of the substance into gelatine capsules for ingestion.

Many people are vegetarian and if this method was used, these people,
and those who abstain from pigmeat for whatever reason, would be
unable to benifit.

Tom Burchick,
Murray Pl, Duns, Berwickshire.