Letters archive

You're absolutely right. Even if every myth about cannabis causing "reefer madness" were true, the harm caused by the drug would not justify sending users to prison (3 November, p 3 and p 12) . The zero tolerance approach both victimises users and harms society at large. Prisons transmit violent habits and values rather than …

David Fergusson was quoted as saying that he "can't explain away" the correlation between marijuana use and subsequent hard drugs use found in his study in New Zealand. But the hardly radical Institute of Medicine, part of the US National Academy of Sciences, discredited the "gateway theory" that marijuana leads to hard drugs use in …

You report that: "Although two-thirds of cannabis users [in the New Zealand study] did not progress to other illicit drugs, nearly all hard-drug users started off on cannabis." Could it not be that most teenagers—and also most adults—use some sort of mild drug, such as cannabis, nicotine and alcohol, and that a smaller subset of …

I was sorry to see you fall for an old statistical (or philosophical) chestnut. "The link is undeniable," you say of the New Zealand study that showed 99 per cent of hard drug users started with cannabis. An unpublished study of my own reveals that 100 per cent of all drug users and alcoholics started …

The causes of the BSE blunder are clear (27 October, p 14) . First, spending only £217,000 on such a critical experiment was clearly stupid. I have received far larger grants for carrying out far less important research. Secondly, that Whitehall was in any way involved in the science of the experiment was just plain …

Karlin Lillington fails to note the main advantage of e-paper—reflection (27 October, p 36) . Through millions of years, evolution has provided us with a couple of eyes that are exquisitely tuned to perceive light reflected from objects, but clearly unsuited for looking straight at light-emitting objects. Cathode ray tubes and all other would-be paper …

Your correspondent Peter Listkiewicz is confusing Antonio Canaletto with his nephew Bernardo Bellotto (10 November, p 55) . It was Bellotto who painted Warsaw, Dresden and Vienna, and who started the confusion by trading on his uncle's name.

The skyscraper rescue platform is an excellent idea (3 November, p 24) . But it is sad that it took the tragedy of the attack on the World Trade Center to get people to take it seriously. Two other ideas occurred to me that could be used to complement the platform, and they'd be cheaper. …

Your article states: "From next June, all owners of business premises in Britain will have to make safe any asbestos in their buildings" (10 November, p 25) . Under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act, they already have an obligation to make safe any asbestos in their premises. What the writer refers to …

Mike Pitts is wrong to say that opponents of the Highways Agency's Stonehenge road scheme risk "losing the entire scheme" (27 October, p 51) . What arouses opposition to the scheme in its present form is the idea that the road tunnel should be short, so that its cuttings and permanently lit portals, and some …

Feedback introduced the term "semiopathy" – the tendency to read inappropriate emotions into signs – to the world (10 November) . But am I the only one to note the tendency of semiopathic manifestations to achieve the total opposite of their apparent aim? Take the heroic campaign of the lollipop ladies of Britain over the …

It must be a sign of science fiction addiction that every time I see the roadworks sign "Caution heavy plant crossing", I think: "Beware triffids!"

A sign on the garden gate of a house near me bears the words "loose Alsations". I don't know whether to look out for dogs roaming freely, to free captive dogs, take a bag and buy a couple of kilos of them, watch where I put my feet, or criticise their morals.

I thought I would tell you of a sign I saw while driving in Oxford. Here, as part of a traffic-calming scheme, a sign proclaims "Humped Zebra Crossing—400 yards". Although I slowed to look, I saw nothing of note.

The box story in Feedback on 10 November described a Yorkshire Building Society mortgage application form with product information listing a maximum mortgage of 95 per cent. It has since come to our attention that the Yorkhire Building Society does in fact offer 100 per cent mortgages. We apologise if any other impression was given …