I HAD to write because I am dumbfounded at the hypocrisy shown by the Evening Post in your front page and editorial coverage of the drug raids carried out by police in Southmead last Thursday.
While the Evening Post praised the police actions and condemned the damage caused by drugs the leading article in that day's Business Week supplement was an enthusiastic promotion of Imperial Tobacco.
This is an organisation which produces and pushes the most addictive and deadly drug on the planet.
The article largely bemoaned how terrible it was that various governments were trying to save their citizens lives by limiting the promotion of tobacco and how Imperial were bravely trying to oppose this in the courts.
Your article even reported it as a victory that Imperial had delayed measures brought in by the Scottish government to stop young people smoking.
More than 100,000 people a year die in the UK and many millions worldwide as a result of smoking, as well as the mental, physical and financial impoverishment it causes, most especially in places like Southmead.
In contrast, a close reading of the police raid on Southmead shows that by far the most widespread drug seized was cannabis.
This is a drug whose harmfulness is regarded as marginal even by government advisers.
Furthermore, when did it become acceptable for the police to carry out widespread raids on impoverished estates in Bristol?
Is this because the police intrinsically label the poor as criminal and without the political power to fight back.
When can we expect to see similar military style raids on areas like Clifton?
Justin Dillon
Bristol
Editor's note: Whatever you may think of the morality of the tobacco industry, it is a legal business. Growing, selling and using cannabis, however, is not.
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