Letter: Drive against drugs

Sir: Mick Humphreys (letter, 2 June) raises the important point that any "decriminalisation" of drugs would represent a de facto official support of those who supply drugs. This might eventually lead to the same situation as with tobacco and alcohol, in which the Government preaches against these substances and the health and road safety dangers associated with them, but, at the same time, is benefiting from the tax on them.

Moreover the road and industrial safety aspects of drug-taking are conveniently forgotten by the liberalisation lobby and especially by self-styled "libertarian" young people.

One of these latter, from Belgium, visited this address a year or two ago and was scornful about the UK's "stodgy" drug-controls as compared with the Netherlands. "When I came out of a drug `coffee shop' in Amsterdam," he said, "I have never had a happier journey than on the way back to Belgium; it was just as if the car were floating in the air."

Do we really want to encourage this sort of euphoric drug-induced driving on UK motorways, when, already, we already have drivers who are tired, or alcohol-impaired, or under the influence of mobile telephones or legitimately prescribed pain-killers?

E TURNBULL

Gosforth, Northumberland