Letters | 17 January 2019

The straight dope

Sir: Much of the media and a large part of the political class in Britain seem to have fallen completely for the propaganda of one of the biggest greed lobbies in the world, the billionaire-backed campaign for cannabis legalisation. Articles such as the one by Robert Jackman (‘Homegrown industry’, 12 January) suggest that marijuana is a benign drug, and make vague claims for its supposed medical benefits. Yet across the world, as Alex Berenson’s new book on the subject, Tell Your Children, shows, worrying developments are correlated with this poorly researched, expensively hyped and brilliantly spun adventure.

In Finland, Denmark and the US, recorded instances of mental illness have sharply increased as the unfettered use of marijuana has become more widespread. In the US state of Washington, the first to legalise marijuana, the crimes of murder and aggravated assault have risen far faster than national averages. Mr Jackman rejoices that Sir John Major and Nigel Farage have both called for ‘revisiting’ Britain’s allegedly harsh drug laws, which any alert observer can see are almost wholly unenforced.