Dangers of dope
From Edward Collier
Sir: David Hockney’s letter (18 June) is a good deal further off the mark than Eric Ellis’s original article. To us in the decadent, morally relativistic West, 20 years might seem rather harsh for smuggling marijuana. But that was the law of the country Schapelle Corby was visiting. As they say, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. What’s more, his assertion that marijuana is harmless, based on his personal experience, is risibly feeble. Next he’ll be telling us that, as he’s been smoking tobacco for 50 years, it too must be harmless. Marijuana contains a number of carcinogenic and mutagenic chemicals, and in any case is normally smoked with tobacco, whose inimical character must be known even to so generous an apologist as Mr Hockney. But marijuana’s more insidious effects, those on mental health, are now at last beginning to gain prominence. I can attest to these unpleasant and dangerous effects, from personal experience.
Edward Collier Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
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