Up in smoke

We welcome your editorial calling for the development of cannabis-based medicines (17 March). The main thing holding this back is laws that are so restrictive that they treat cannabis as if it were as dangerous as radioactive material and required similar security and licensing procedures. This makes research so difficult and expensive that it’s just not worth bothering. What makes this absolutely absurd is that, as we all know, cannabis is widely used and easily available throughout the UK. The law is an ass.

However, one of the reasons these restrictions apply is because of the vast over-exaggeration of the risks of mental health problems, so we deplore your claim that for this reason it would be wrong to legalise recreational use. There is no evidence that cannabis causes mental health problems. Ask the Institute of Psychiatry and they will confirm. However, illegality causes a huge number of problems and drives crime on our streets.

What the evidence shows is that cannabis can be a component factor in mental health problems amongst a small number of people and it increases the risk of a diagnosis of mental illness. In the general population that risk is about 1 in 20,000. By comparison, the risk of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is about 1 in 3,000. The latest research shows that smoking cigarettes may increase the risk even more than smoking cannabis.

Until the media stops misreporting on the very low risk link between cannabis and mental illness, sadly, your call for legal access to cannabis as medicine will be further delayed. PETER REYNOLDS

President CLEAR Cannabis Law Reform

PO Box 12552, Colchester