Pubdate: Sun, 07 Sep 2014
Source: Mail on Sunday, The (UK)
Copyright: 2014 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/255
Authors: Nick Constable and Ben Ellery
Page: 10

KEW GARDENS DRUGS STORM OVER 'INTOXICATION SEASON' OF MIND-ALTERING PLANTS

ANTI-DRUGS campaigners last night condemned an exhibition at the 
Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew where speakers will discuss the uses of 
marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The Intoxication Season is open to visitors of any age and displays 
plants including cannabis, the hallucinogen peyote, and poppies, 
which are used to make opium.

Professor David Nutt, who was sacked as a Government adviser for his 
views downplaying the dangers of drugs, will give a keynote speech on 
the 'chemical underworld of mind-altering plants'.

Other lectures include Seeing Through The Smoke, about the 'helpful 
properties' of cannabis, while another event celebrates the 
hallucinogen psilocybin as the 'powerful chemical which makes mushrooms magic'.

The three-week exhibition is set to begin on September 20 at the 
300-acre Kew Gardens, which receives about half its funding from the 
Government. It has been given UKP114.5million of public money since 2010.

Curators insist that the event, which will display 'notorious mind 
altering plants' in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, will 'in no 
way condone the use of illegal drugs'.

But last night campaign groups said that Kew, whose patron is Prince 
Charles, was 'failing to safeguard youngsters from the dangers of 
drugs'. Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, chief executive of the charity 
Drug-FAM, said: 'The literature from Kew Gardens reads like an 
invitation for children to come and experiment with drugs. I am sure 
these people are all experts in their field but I deal with families 
who have lost children to drugs and my son died as a result of them.

'The organisers are behaving extremely irresponsibly and not 
safeguarding youngsters. It's awful a publicly funded organisation is 
using its money for such a festival.'

Prof Nutt has recently called for users to be given 'more informed 
choices about their use of legal and controlled drugs'. He said his 
lecture would discuss the 'relative harms of drugs' and possible new 
treatments using controlled substances such as psilocybin.

'The regulations controlling psilocybin mushrooms are ten times more 
strict than those controlling heroin,' he said. 'It makes no sense. 
All it does is stop people like me doing research and helping develop 
treatments. I am not recommending the use of any drug. The law is 
designed to keep recreational users from harm. If it doesn't do that, 
but massively impairs research, it is actually doing people a 
disservice.' But Mary Brett, of campaign group Cannabis Skunk Sense, 
said: 'Kew should not be giving him this platform. Drugs are too 
serious a subject to be treated in this manner. But they've done it 
because they know he's controversial.' David Raynes, of the National 
Drug Prevention Alliance and a former HM Customs Assistant Chief 
Investigation Officer, said: 'Professor Nutt will go anywhere and do 
anything to bang his drum for the normalisation of drug use.

'He writes about giving drug users accurate information but those 
most badly affected by drugs are often young people who haven't 
developed a risk-judgment mechanism.'

A Royal Botanic Gardens spokeswoman said no illegal drugs would be 
exhibited at the festival, only 'the living plants from which illegal 
and legal drugs are derived'.

These could be viewed only from behind a security barrier.

'We are aiming to show how plants' identities have been manipulated 
through time, sometimes portrayed as friend, sometimes as foe, when 
no plant is inherently a drug, a medicine, or a poison,' she added.
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