Letters | Cannabis, freedom of press, US politics, diversity, Brexit, language, Cornwall

Letters to the editor

High ho silver lining

I was disappointed by “The right way to do drugs” (February 13th). It didn’t go far enough in calling for cannabis to be legalised. There is no lethal dose of cannabis, though there are lethal doses of the government-approved alternatives to cannabis. Getting users off deadly alcohol, say, and towards cannabis will save lives. Marijuana should be as cheap and as accessible as possible. Taxing and restricting it will not fix the problem. There is a functional black market and it is not going to end just because the government “sort of” legalised pot.

DAN KING
Sacramento, California

In my experience a cost calculation drives the preference among occasional users for higher THC content in cannabis. Only one or two tokes are required to give occasional users the desired high, so a little weed goes a lot further. It follows that, to the extent there is price sensitivity, higher prices and taxes would have the perverse effect of pushing your 80% of occasional users towards inhaling more smoke.

The calculus for the 20% who are heavy users is different. There is an intensity factor. Even though heavy users may be high for longer, they are not nearly as high as the occasional user. They do indeed prefer higher THC content, just to achieve any effect at all. So in their case higher prices and taxes would encourage the continuation of a black market.

PETER CONROY
Ottawa, Canada

Japanese television

Anchors away” (February 20th) submitted that “it is no coincidence” that the three anchors who left their TV programmes in Japan “are robust critics of the government”, implying the government had intervened in their leaving. However, Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, clearly stated at a press conference on February 9th that “freedom of the press and editorial rights must be guaranteed.” The government of Japan has been and will remain fully committed to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The descriptions in your article have no ground.

YASUHISA KAWAMURA
Press secretary
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Tokyo

Small but mighty

Lexington noted that if no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral-college votes, the contest is decided by the House of Representatives, which will be Republican-held (February 20th). However, in such a circumstance each state gets only one vote in the House, regardless of how many representatives are elected from that state. Presumably, Texas would vote Republican and California would vote Democrat. But numerous smaller states would have an equal weight with the more populous ones.

RYAN SCHAAP
Thousand Oaks, California

Mix it up

It is true: diversity undermines trust (Schumpeter, February 13th). But this may be its greatest gift. When ethnically different others are present, people tend to remain cautious, scrutinise information and reach better decisions. Our research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that ethnically diverse markets are significantly less likely to bubble compared with homogenous ones. The results held for North America and South-East Asia, notwithstanding the differences in culture, history and ethnic composition.

In homogenous markets, we reason, trust in other people’s reasonableness can cause erroneous beliefs to spread more readily. Diversity makes you better precisely because it makes you less trusting.

PROFESSOR SHEEN LEVINE
The University of Texas, Dallas

Divide and choose?

I read Bagehot’s fascinating article on the divergent views of the European Union from people in Cambridge and Peterborough (February 20th). This divergence has little to do with nativism or nationalism or even class. It is a pertinent fact that because of its role as a centre for agriculture, food processing, packaging and logistics, Peterborough has borne a heavy burden in respect of unskilled immigration from the EU: more than 30,000 new migrants from 2004 to 2011. This puts huge pressure on public services, and has arguably kept wages low and entrenched welfare dependency among many indigenous and low-skilled workers.

Business, and the Treasury, have reaped the economic benefit of this large-scale migration, but local taxpayers have footed the bill and seen the pressures consequent in this unprecedented demographic change. Local people can’t have helped noticing, and are canny enough to understand the role of the EU Free Movement Directive.

People in Peterborough have seen the cost of unrestricted immigration and, as a result, are more conscious than most of the benefits or otherwise of Britain’s membership of the EU. Is it any wonder that they are more sceptical?

STEWART JACKSON
Member of Parliament for Peterborough

I am not sure about Bagehot’s “educational-cultural divide” over Europe. The Brexit referendum has not come about because of an outcry across the land by ordinary folk or because public opinion has been consistently against EU membership, or because people are calling for an immediate exit. We are having a referendum because of a battle within the educational and political elite. It is symptomatic of the division within the Tory Party, not within the country, yet at least.

However, with “in” campaigners like Jeremy Corbyn ranting something along the lines of “Workers of the EU, unite!”, the divisions could get very real, very soon.

LUKE CARR
London

Double entendres

Johnson, ruminating on the secret meaning of “feisty” (February 13th) would have done well to have provided a whiff, as it were, of etymology. In Mark Forsyth’s marvellous book, “The Etymologicon”, and largely corroborated by the Oxford English Dictionary, feisty, in the sense of “spirited”, is derived from “fist” or “feist”, meaning a small dog. This in turn comes from the phrase “a fisting hound”, where “to fist” means to fart.

VENKAT ANANTHARAM
Berkeley, California

Catching the wave

As a resident of next-door Devon I read your article about Cornwall’s post-industrial economy with great interest (“Winter sun”, February 20th). In addition to the demographic, political and infrastructural factors which you identify, advances in affordable wetsuit technology have also played an important role in tourism. As a result, anyone can spend as much time in the sea as they want the whole year round. The effect has been revolutionary, as local surfers know only too well.

ANTHONY KING
Exeter, Devon

This article appeared in the Letters section of the print edition under the headline "Letters to the editor"

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