Peter Lilley has revived the legalise cannabis campaign, amid claims from its adherents it is less harmful than tobacco. How do they know? In the early Seventies, I knew hundreds of pot-smokers and the preferred method was to break a cigarette over the Rizzla papers before sprinkling on the dope and rolling up.

Very occasionally, it would be smoked or eaten neat but this was prohibitively expensive and startingly powerful. From my observations at the University of Sussex, where drug-taking is the norm, little has changed over the years. Using Government powers to gradually criminalise cigarettes would be infinitely more in the nation's interests, leaving the cannabis law unchanged. I gave up smoking in 1975 and thank God I abandoned the stultifying effect it had on me.

-William Fraser, Hailsham