Cannabis policy

SIR – Your leader column (October 10) calling for a debate on wider cannabis legalisation is very welcome, as is supporting a change in the law to find a way for UK patients to benefit from medicines derived from cannabis.

However, this debate needs to go further to include all narcotic drugs, as the only universal point of agreement is that the drugs policy doesn’t work. A sensible, evidence-based reassessment of our policy is currently frozen, as I found when my efforts to have a conversation between ministers was closed down by the Home Office for fear of undermining the Government’s central message that “drugs are bad, they are banned”.

Calm, expert reassessment of our policy would also be an opportunity for Britain to lead policy that reduces harm to society globally, not meekly follow others because we have been incapable of having this debate. Crispin Blunt MP (Con) Co-chairman, All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform London SW1

SIR – It would be a brave government that legalises cannabis for recreational use. Apart from the widely accepted mental-health harms, the most recent research suggests that it is teratogenic (like thalidomide) and could disturb the development of an unborn child.

In any case, cannabis use in the UK is way below that of tobacco and alcohol, so the net “public good” from legalisation is not easy to advocate. David Raynes

Executive Councillor National Drug Prevention Alliance Slough, Berkshire

SIR – Those in favour of legalising cannabis should visit the west coast of America. It can now be bought at hundreds of legal outlets in cities from Seattle to Portland, adding to an already out-of-control misuse of easily available opioids, with armies of drugcrazed souls wandering around. Do we want to replicate scenes like that here? Willy Dunn

Wareside, Herts