Should cannabis be legalised for medical use?

IT’S a pity Baroness Meacher, who believes the ban on cannabis as a medicine is ‘irrational’, failed to listen properly when it was discussed at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. It was made perfectly clear that only purified extracts (from cannabis or from any other sources) of useful chemical substances can, under present laws, be licensed as medicines. Would Baroness Meacher be happy to eat mouldy bread to get her penicillin or chew willow bark for her aspirin?

mary Brett, amersham, Bucks.

IS PROFESSOR Mike Barnes (Mail) aware that 13,454 young people aged under 18, including 183 aged 13 or under, were treated for cannabis problems in 2014/5 — a rise of nearly 50 per cent in eight years, almost certainly due to the increased strength of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)? The number treated for alcohol addiction was 3,133, according to official figures for England. The average age of first use of cannabis is 13.

Lucy Dawe, cannabis skunk sense, lindfield, W. sussex.

I’M NOT a deranged individual who suffers mental problems. I’m a man with terminal cancer who is viewed as a criminal for using a God-given plant to save my life. Politicians and pharmaceutical companies are making millions by denying the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. This country’s philosophy is ‘treatment is more profitable than cure’. I know I’m dying, but before I die — unless this plant is permitted to be used to treat not only cancer but a vast array of illnesses — then I will go out ‘with a bang’. I’m sane, but becoming more agitated by the day.

jason Blake, hull, east yorks.

WITH the increasing evidence that cannabis does have health benefits, such as helping in pain relief for chronic sufferers, and the certainty that it causes mental health issues, I hope the Government has scientists beavering away trying to find a solution that can take the good aspects of cannabis into a new product, but without the damage it causes to the brain. A life of unbearable pain or brain damage at some stage? Not much of a choice . . .

ann Field, manchester.