Minor edit.
Dear Jim Murphy
I laud the recent ban on smoking in enclosed public places, but I feel it doesn't go nearly far enough. Tobacco, which contains the potent and highly addictive narcotic nicotine, is the leading cause of death among all intoxicating substances and the principle avoidable cause of premature deaths in the UK, killing 106,000 people every year in the UK according to the UK Department of Health [1]. Judging by the standards applied to other intoxicating substances, many of which it is a grave offence to possess, produce or sell, yet which cause far fewer deaths, I can see no logical reason why tobacco should not be legislated as a class A drug. For comparison, MDMA, a class A drug, causes 10-30 deaths each year, out of an estimated 500,000 regular users in the UK [2], about two thirds of which occur when MDMA is used in conjunction with other drugs [2], and cannabis, a class C drug, has not yet been shown to have a casual link to increased mortality in users.
I also propose that cannabis should be reinstated as a class B drug, since it serves as a gateway to tobacco use, as tobacco is often mixed with cannabis to improve it's combustion properties when smoked. I urge you to work to increase public awareness of this danger inherent to cannabis use, since there are many reports of individuals becoming nicotine addicts after starting out on cannabis.
As for alcohol, I find it baffling that it's still being sold across the country when it's been well established that alcohol is a leading cause of violent crime, with the perpetrator being reported by the victim to have been under the influence of alcohol in 40% of all violent incidents [3], and there were 8,386 alcohol-related deaths in 2005 [4]. Aside from the slow degradation and eventual failure of the liver which is an established outcome of long-term alcoholism, alcohol also has the frightening ability to kill with just one drink, as the first drink lowers the inhibitions and self-control of the alcohol user, thus leading to the consumption of additional drinks and eventual death through accident or acute poisoning, or even the death of an innocent bystander through alcohol-induced aggression. Indeed, several times when travelling through Glasgow on the bus at night, as the clubs have been emptying, I've witnessed intoxicated alcohol-users head-butt the window of the bus I was riding in, and I've witnessed several fights among alcohol users, one of which resulted in one individual being taken away in an ambulance. With alcohol, there's no such thing as a safe dose, and I would like to see life sentences given to dealers who supply this menace to otherwise law-abiding citizens.
Hopefully you'll be able to draw attention to these two glaring oversights in the current drugs legislation, and protect the public from the evidently great dangers of alcohol and tobacco.
Your sincerely,
Peter MacKenzie
[1] UK Department of Health,
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/Tobacco/index.htm[2] National Institute for Medical Research; Drugs and addiction, ecstasy and cannabis,
http://www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk/MillHillEssays/2002/drugs.htm[3] Home Office,
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/reducing-crime/alcohol-related-crime/[4] British Criminal Survey,
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/rdsolr3503.pdf