BANS DON'T WORK

THANK you Robert Hicks (Letters, 26/3) for informing us that VicRoads has
reported cannabis to be responsible for 4.3 per cent of that State's road
deaths and implying that continued prohibition is therefore the only way.

But I am inclined to ask what, by your logic, we should do about alcohol.
That drug's responsibility for road deaths must clearly be far greater and
it is therefore quite obviously imperative for us to ban it in all forms
immediately.

But hold on a minute, didn't they try that somewhere else once upon a time?
Do the words Volstead Act mean anything to you? That great exercise in
prohibition was an abject failure, serving only to deliver the greatest
boost organised crime could ever have hoped for, and nothing has changed in
83 years as prohibitionist strategies worldwide continue to deliver ever
more abject failures at massive social cost. When will we ever learn?

NICK SUESS, Bayswater.