HURDLES ON THE ROAD TO DECRIMINALISATION

Fernando Henrique Cardoso's argument that cannabis should be
decriminalised is compelling, and brings up many of the points that
have been going round and round ever since I was at university in the
1970s ("Treat drug users not as criminals, but as patients who need
care", December 27).

So if we have failed in the war on drugs, and failed in operatic
proportions, why are successive governments so against the idea?

I suggest the answer in one word - responsibility. At the moment, people
who smoke and eventually get emphysema, or who drink alcohol to excess
and kill themselves or others in a car crash, have made their decisions
in the face of the facts and must take responsibility for it.

Let us say the government decides to decriminalise cannabis on the
basis of Mr Cardoso's claim that "the harm it causes is at worst
similar to the harm caused by alcohol and tobacco". Then who will
take responsibility for the people who eventually turn up to assert
that government-sanctioned cannabis resulted in them developing
schizophrenia, or was the starting point for their decline into the
maelstrom of hard drug use?

I can see the plaintiff lawyers lining up in the corridor
already.

Ross MacPherson

Seaforth