PROHIBITION QUESTION

SIR, - Ian Oliver wrote (July 23) that we should let science settle the
"cannabis controversy". But considering the way "scientific results" are
today bought and sold like any other product of industry, "science" might
not be a sufficiently sharp tool for deciding anything even slightly
controversial.

On the contrary, we should let history settle the question of cannabis
prohibition. A study of the history of modern prohibition reveals that it
has been brought to us by a remarkably small coterie of messianic
do-gooders. They were a small band of true believers who foisted
prohibition on the world as if it were the long-lost 11th Commandment.

Alcohol prohibition in the US was one of their finest achievements: so
successful it had to be repealed.

The prohibition on cannabis was brought to us by Harry Anslinger who, in
the 1930s, had just failed as one of alcohol prohibition's great enforcers.

He played upon the racist attitudes of southern Americans against Mexican
farmworkers who, at the time, along with jazz musicians, were about the
only cannabis users.

As for cannabis being dangerous and mind-altering, so are a couple of
pints, and it is a generally recognised principle of free societies that
the danger inherent in any given activity shall be the basis for the
stringency of its regulation. On this basis, tobacco should be far more
severely regulated than cannabis, and hard liquor as well.

Prohibition is never an appropriate or effective means of regulation, as
has been "scientifically" and historically proved down through the ages:
from the immediate failure of that very first one against apples to today's
monumental blunder called the war on drugs.

Peter Webster, Review editor, International Journal of Drug Policy,
Quartier Les Vignes, Auvare, France.