On a scholarly level, I would be interested to learn what evidence Jock Coats has to support his claims that the likes of Wordsworth, Wilberforce and Dodgson took recreational drugs (Oxford Mail, December 14).

Coleridge was certainly a user. The effects rendered him a totally irresponsible and incapable father and a burden on his friends like Robert Southey from whom he was always begging money -- hardly an upstanding example of the benefits of recreational drug use.

Cocaine was widely treated as a painkiller.

The composer Berlioz used it to attack a congenital stomach complaint, for example.

In later life, he took larger and larger doses which rendered him "incapable and stupid" and probably helped lead to the fall that hastened his eventual end.

There may be an argument about legalising drugs to combat crime, but surely it will only mean today's criminals being tomorrow's sharp suited entrepreneurs?

It is a profound sadness to me that with all the potential intelligence mankind has, it can think of nothing better to do than poison itself on crack in the name of self-entertainment. Have we really got no imaginations beyond illusory, chemically-induced ones?

The idea that the way to bring the crime rate down is by reducing the number of offences belongs to an old Monty Python sketch, which also called for the legalisation of murder and arson on the grounds that its illegality was what made it so attractive.

I once thought they were being satirical, but now I am not so sure. ALAN PAGE, Iffley Road, Oxford