Why we should FORMER Oxford University student Howard Marks laid the foundations of an international drugs empire in the shadow of the city's dreaming spires.

Mr Marks said: "I will be arguing that cannabis would be less dangerous if it was not prohibited. I will also be arguing for legalisation from a civil liberties point of view.

"I still smoke the drug and it has never had a harmful effect on me."

Last September, Dr Philip Robson, a senior clinical lecturer and psychiatrist at Warneford Hospital, Oxford, backed legalisation. He said: "Alcohol and tobacco are arguably more toxic and addictive than cannabis, and the intoxication associated with alcohol can be much more dangerous and disruptive to society.

"Cannabis has been used as a medicine for thousands of years, but at the moment it cannot be prescribed under any circumstances."

Marks, a student at Balliol College in the 1960s, went on to form links with the drugs underworld and at one stage was smuggling up to 50 tons of hashish into America and Europe. Using 43 different aliases, he operated 25 companies to cover his drug dealing.

In 1981, he was cleared of smuggling cannabis worth £20m into Britain. In 1989, he stood trial in America and the following year began a 25-year jail sentence.

Six years later he was freed on parole, and began to write his life story, Mr Nice. He has spoken in favour of legalisation on TV chat shows

Oxford Union spokesman, Sheldon Westlake, said: "Mr Marks has always been adamant that cannabis is not a harmful drug." Why we shouldn't JAN and Paul Betts have a very personal reason for arguing against the legalisation of cannabis.

Their teenage daughter, Leah, died after taking an Ecstasy tablet at her 18th birthday party. The devastating tragedy has always been at the heart of their anti-drugs stance.

Mr and Mrs Betts, from Latchingdon, Essex, watched helplessly in November 1995 as their daughter lay in hospital in a coma. Five days after she collapsed they decided to switch off her life-support machine, following consultation with doctors.

The couple took a photograph of Leah lying in a coma to push their anti-drugs message and vowed to try to prevent similar deaths.

They will call on medical research carried out in America to show that cannabis can have a harmful effect on the brain. And they will add that cannabis users can become dependent over a short period of time and that those who use it before driving are threatening life on the roads.

Mr Betts, 52, said: "I will be bringing evidence of detailed research to the debate which shows the harmful effect that cannabis can have on the brain. The drug has become much stronger than the 'grass' that was used in the 1960s."

Although he would not be suggesting that cannabis users automatically progress to harder drugs, he said there was evidence that some heroin users started out by experimenting with cannabis.

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