Dear Sir,

I have been following with interest the speculation about whether the Governor will approve a law legalising cannabis and the Premier’s assertion that the community voted for it. The community clearly voted for a wide Progressive Labour Party platform but I wonder how much attention was paid to this particular point and, if it had been, how widely the legalisation would have been supported other than by those who want to use cannabis and avoid being banned from entering the US.

I quote from a recent article in The Week magazine, itself quoting from an article in The Times of November 22: “Legalise pot? You must be off your head! In the old days hashish contained about two per cent to five per cent of the main psychoactive component, THC. Modern skunk is five times more potent and can have devastating psychotic effects. The first National Health Service clinic for cannabis-induced psychosis which opened in 2019 in London has been swamped by the number of referrals.

It added: “Some say that legislation would bring back the weaker variety. Not so. The $2 billion market in Colorado, which legalised cannabis in 2012, is ‘dominated by products with high levels of THC’. Doctors there report an alarming rise among users of the syndrome known as ‘scromiting’ (screaming and vomiting at the same time). Nor does legalisation get rid of criminal gangs; they just charge lower prices to undercut the legal trade. Nearly 75 per cent of California’s $12 billion trade in 2019 was in black market sales.”

If all the above is true, and I have no reason to believe it is not, I think that at the very least the topic should be publicly debated again before legislation is rushed through.

MARGARET LLOYD

Warwick