Mr. Brendan Minish:

I wanted to take issue with a point Professor Smyth made. He stated that there was a thirtyfold increase in cannabis psychosis in Portugal. I know the paper in question. There are issues about how the data was gathered. It was gathered in the context of admission data, so it obviously relates to people feeling open. If you take this paper at worst possible value and treat all the numbers with respect, it implies that approximately five in 100,000 cannabis users - or one in 20,000 - will develop psychosis. In terms of deterrents, we have arrested for possession on average about 16,000 people a year. Assuming that they all reform themselves and never use cannabis again, we are preventing less than one case of cannabis psychosis a year through our use of the justice system. That seems a very unfortunate way to use a justice system.