I CANNOT agree with Rev D G Griffin that the legalising of cannabis or any other substance is in any way the same thing as condoning or approving its use (You Say, June 10).

If there is one lesson to be learnt from US attempts to prohibit alcohol in the 1920s, it is that compulsion and enforcement usually achieve the direct opposite of what is intended.

Human nature being what it is, there is a temptation to try anything that is prohibited and it becomes glamourised. Vast profits are to be gained from providing what is banned and the profiteers obviously promote their products. Enforcement can never hope to keep pace.

Before 1921, when drugs were readily and cheaply available, there was a small residual dependency and addiction.

It is attempts to control and regulate that have led to the present proliferation.

If the church has at last come round to realising that there is more to be achieved by education and information, than by dogmatic enforcement, then that is indeed progress.

JOHN HINTON, Worcester.