Cannabis your letters

ALCOHOL is freely available but its harm to society in the form of
alcoholism, drinkdriving and violence cannot be denied. Stringent laws are
required to control alcohol use. Cannabis does not do the same social and
physical harm, so laws controlling its use need only be for the protection
of the users themselves. Who has the right to stop another person consuming
something that only has personal health risks?

A D Moore, Surrey

DOCTORS and the general public are scornful at the lack of thought and
discernment our timid politicians show on the subject of decriminalising
cannabis. Here the wool can't be pulled over our eyes; too many of us have
experienced, since the Sixties, its benefits particularly medical.

We and our young people try to ignore the dangerous nonsense which equates
cannabis with hard drugs. Some thirty years on, this is still peddled by
the Labour Party to the considerable delight of drug dealers. A thorough
factual debate on cannabis, its uses and management, is now long overdue.

Annie Henry, London

YOU have inadvertently included my name in the list of signatories to your
campaign to decriminalise cannabis. I am not a signatory to this document
nor, as the BBC's Director of Television, would I take a position on this
issue.

Alan Yentob, BBC Television Centre, London W12