JACK Straw has, since becoming Home Secretary, proclaimed publicly that parents should be held legally responsible for the criminal activities of their offspring; a notion that he suggested to me when we were both law students at Leeds University in the 1960s. Therefore, I should like him to tell your readers how he proposes to punish himself!

David Oddy

Buxton, Derbyshire

I HAVE been refraining from NHS-prescribed pain-relieving drugs for some 16 months in favour of smoking/eating cannabis. My mental age has risen back to what it was when I passed my degree three years ago and if I'd carried on taking prescribed DF-118's I believe I'd probably be dead by now. Many thanks for involving yourselves in the "Legalise It" campaign.

Justine N Shuter

I HAVE smoked cannabis since 1982. My brother committed suicide last year after using Prozac for depression for quite some time after giving up the use of the weed. I wish he had stayed on it - he was a nice guy and I miss him.

Paul McQueen

IN THE wake of the Jack Straw cannabis controversy and your ongoing campaign to have the drug legalised, it strikes me that no one is addressing the real drugs issue here. Namely, why on earth have we become so unhappy and disillusioned with modern life that we feel the need to walk around either half-doped or in pursuit of artificial joy all the time?

Once we start asking the real questions then maybe we, as what is supposedly the most intelligent species on earth, can get our (clear enough) heads together and start working out how we can make life better for ourselves so that it really is improved - outside our heads as well as in - 24 hours a day.

Or is that just a drug-induced fantasy?

Miss LS King

Blackbird Leys, Oxford

DID you see Leah Betts or speak to her parents to see the heartbreak of the death of their beloved daughter. All drugs are dangerous. We need a lot more Jack Straws. Drugs are trash. You and your editor should take a one way ticket to Iran where they chop your hands off for being a dopehead.

Anon