Cannabis responsible for millions of deaths

I AGREE with your correspondent Eric Hafner of New Jersey (Letters, 18 November) that cannabis use should be legalised and controlled. This would have the immediate effect of taking out the criminal element which has a vested interest in increasing the use of an extremely damaging drug.

It has exactly the same justification as was used to take alcohol production and distribution into control by authorities facing the same problem on both substances.

It is the illegality of cannabis, which can be produced in vast amounts for pennies, which pushes up the price and makes distribution of it a very lucrative business indeed.

The rest of Mr Hafner’s letter is arrant nonsense. Cannabis kills millions annually. When used in adolescence it damages the brain and permanently changes its function. It is largely responsible for the epidemic of paranoid schizophrenia we are now experiencing. As such, a huge proportion of the teenage suicides we are now suffering can be directly traced to cannabis use. It desensitises users and allows them to perform acts of appalling violence without concern. It suppresses normal emotional release which results in explosions of aggression when a regular user cannot get his or her fix. It causes huge mood swings in users of which they are not always aware. And with the extra strong hallucinogenic strains now being used, it demotivates at even low levels of use. It also produces a tar hugely more carcinogenic than tobacco and is thought by some well-informed opinion to be behind the increasing incidence of bowel and testicular cancer in young men.

The statement that it is non-addictive is questionable. Regular users very soon can become emotionally addicted to its effect. It has a damaging effect on the male generative system and damages the unborn child more assiduously than alcohol use does.

Apart from that it is fine. Most people can physically tolerate light and occasional use. Some cannot. I lived for 15 years in a part of the world in which cannabis use was widespread and heavy among the poor. It damaged all their body functions and a huge proportion of them were dead in their thirties. I am enraged when I read the rubbish talked about it.

David McEwan Hill, 
Sandbank, Argyll