28/01/2008 00:00:00
Letter: Illegal Cannabis Feeds Child Use
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Modern life can be stressful, difficult and often painful. What one
uses to ease this, be it food, prescription drugs, tobacco, alcohol or
cannabis, should be of no concern to others. Most of the "crutches" used
by adults are harmful to some degree, certainly none of the things I've
listed are harmless, and yet only cannabis is illegal. Researchers have
suggested that if alcohol were classified alongside illegal drugs, it
would be in Class A along with cocaine and heroin. In the light of this,
surely the Government will be looking into making alcohol illegal for
the sake of the nation's health? No, of course not.It is right to
question a society where one drug, which directly kills more than 20,000
people a year and indirectly kills tens of thousands of others is legal,
and another with no recorded direct fatalities is illegal. This is the
hypocrisy I referred to in my letter 'Cannabis must be made legal', The
Sentinel, December 3. I have enjoyed reading the ensuing debate, but I
object strongly to suggestions that, because of my stance on cannabis
legalisation, I don't care about children. The speech I delivered at the
LCA conference last year was entitled Cannabis And Children, and in
researching this speech I found reports of children as young as six
smoking cannabis.
I also found an Australian study which suggested how cannabis - indeed
any intoxicant - use by teens can adversely affect their development of
social skills and emotional stability.
Are we educating our children about drug use?
No, we spend far, far more on criminalisation than we do on education
and research. This has got to change. Both the Government and the EU
Drug Agency have reported a reduction in cannabis use by young people
since reclassification to C, and yet they are currently reviewing
whether to revert to Class B. The fact that cannabis is illegal makes it
accessible to children. There have been some tragic stories recounted in
the responses to my letter, but what the writers fail to comprehend is
that all these tragedies happened under the existing system. My reaction
to anyone who blames cannabis for their problems is to ask how the
current system helped or protected them. The answer is that it didn't
and can't. If you're satisfied with this system, you must accept the
criminal supply and control of all illegal drugs, a global trade second
only to oil.
The only way to take illegal drugs out of the hands of criminals, off
the streets and therefore away from children, is to legalise and
regulate, diverting the effort currently made to criminalise into
educating our children about the dangers of all drugs.
DILYS WOOD Legalise Cannabis Alliance
Stoke-on-Trent
Comment: http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk click on News, then Letters
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=13213
Author:
The Sentinel via UKCIA
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