Letters

Alcohol is freely available but its harm to society in the form of alcoholism, drink-driving and violence cannot be denied. Stringent laws are required to control alcohol use. Cannabis does not do the same social and physical harm, so laws controlling its use need only be for the protection of the users themselves. Who has the right to stop another person consuming something that only has personal health risks?

AD Moore

Surrey

Doctors and the general public are scornful at the lack of thought and discernment our timid politicians show on the subject of decriminalising cannabis. Here the wool can't be pulled over our eyes; too many of us have experienced, since the Sixties, its benefits - particularly medical.

We and our young people try to ignore the dangerous nonsense which equates cannabis with hard drugs. Some thirty years on, this is still peddled by the Labour Party - to the considerable delight of drug dealers. A thorough factual debate on cannabis, its uses and management, is now long overdue.

Annie Henry

London

You have inadvertently included my name in the list of signatories to your campaign to decriminalise cannabis. I am not a signatory to this document nor, as the BBC's Director of Television, would I take a position on this issue.

Alan Yentob

BBC Television Centre,

London W12