After reading Lizzie Marvelly's article in Saturday's Herald, it has crossed my mind that legalising cannabis is undoing all the expensive effort that has been put in to making New Zealand smoke free by 2025, or whatever the date was going to be.

Are we going to use cannabis to extract another hefty tax from smokers of this stuff or are we going to give cigarette smokers a break and cease taxing them so severely?

Either way it is going to mean that there will be butts and rubbish thrown around. It will be impossible to walk down the street without being enveloped in a foul smelling cloud caused by those who smoke in public places, more young people thinking they are 'cool” smoking a dangerous substance, more health problems causing added expense on already stretched DHB's, more children of smoking parents being subjected to a poisonous and dangerous drug, the list goes on.

And then, as a non-smoker, there is the lack of freedom to choose not to smoke anything ourselves. We do not have that freedom and have not had since time immemorial. At least with our other legal and equally dangerous drug, alcohol, one has to actually choose to imbibe it, if one is foolish enough to do so, although one could be permanently damaged by someone else who has imbibed alcohol or cannabis and decided to drive a vehicle.

Gail Webster, Greerton