CONTINUING UNEASE ABOUT DRUGS

SIR - One major objection to David Blunkett's announcement that possessing
cannabis will no longer be an arrestable offence (report, Oct 24) is that
the drug is usually ingested by smoking. The smoke is 17 times as
carcinogenic as normal tobacco smoke and psychoactive.

If someone injects heroin in public, passers-by are not forced to take the
drug. Anyone passing by, being near or being trapped in a bus or room with
a cannabis smoker, is being forced to take the drug whether they like it or
not. There will be virtually no means of redress against someone doing
this. this is a profound infringement of the individual's right to his own
physical and mental health. With the issue of passive smoking of
cigarettes and its attendant dangers still a huge concern, it seems almost
beyond belief that this much greater danger can be added into the equation.

The other objection is that cannabis will replace nicotine as a "rite of
passage" drug among teenagers. this is already happening, and will now
accelerate dramatically. Teachers such as myself are already familiar with
the apathy and mental clouding common to those students sucked into the
cannabis "culture". But an even more alarming prospect of cannabis use is
psychosis.

As young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are already at a much higher
risk of schizophrenia than the general population, the Government, with a
stroke of the pen, is condemning a percentage of those young people to a
dreadful and incurable condition that in a less 2liberal" atmosphere they
would have escaped.

This issue is far, far too important to be left in the hands of opportunist
politicians seeking a vote from druggies.

Brendan Campbell, Dublin