High time we legalised dope

Cannabis gave me no pleasure. But it provides relief from pain and should be legalised.

booze. I love the stuff but there are snags to it. It makes you fat and it rots your liver. It affects speech and balance and judgment. It reduces inhibitions and alters personality. It makes me garrulous and maudlin. It makes some people spiteful and violent.

Most fights I’ve seen since I left school have been fuelled by booze. Booze fills every emergency department every Saturday. It crashes cars. It batters wives. The social cost is vast. So we punish the brewers and wine makers with knighthoods.

Dope, as far as I amaware, fuels no fights. I have yet to see anyone do anything under its influence but smile or sleep. The only person I have ever known to be harmed by it is Andy. Forty years ago he went to teach in the Sudan where cannabis was cheaper than tobacco. At the end of his contract he sent a kilo home in the post. When he went to collect it the authorities collected him. He spent six months in prison. He is a lovely man. The sentence has blighted his life.

Marijuana has been shown to counter some forms of chronic pain, the sort of pain that doctors can do little or nothing for and that we who do not suffer from it find hard to imagine.

For us pain is a temporary affliction, a siren blast from the nervous system to alert us to damage. But to some it’s a constant siren day and night, and only

‘‘They’ve legalised it in the Netherlands. Has the sky fallen in?’’