Following the long-expected outcome of the Home Office report into drugs and punishment, can Professor David Nutt expect apologies from then Home Secretary Alan Johnson for sacking him? Simon Allen London N2 [end]
OK, Clegg, posturing over now get practical. Decriminalise cannabis. Sell licences for every postal address which wants one to grow up to six plants. Then get together with the cigarette manufacturers to produce a decent packeted joint say UKP8 per 20 and sell that as a state monopoly. Play your cards right and you'll double the annual UKP11bn tax yield already contributed by tobacco smokers, put street dealers progressively out of business and reduce a lot of petty crime. And on the health and safety pitch, cannabis users will at last know what they're buying. (Not one myself - doesn't do a damn thing for me.) Richard Humble Exeter [end]
As always, what is missing from the current debate about drugs is any discussion about why we take them in the first place. We are rightly concerned that everyone, especially our children, should be educated about the potential ill-effects of drugs and the possible health dangers. But unless we acknowledge that there are legitimate and positive reasons why a person might seek to get high, the "war against drugs" will not make much progress. Humans have been using "recreational" drugs for millennia, and for most people it is generally a positive experience. There are dangers of course - but these are mainly associated with excess use and poor quality. [continues 116 words]
IT is time Britain started to treat drug addiction as an illness rather than a criminal offence ("Cameron slaps down Clegg over calls to relax the drug laws", October 31). Putting people in jail for an illness instead of giving them the proper medical treatment they need isn't just counterproductive, it is also many times more expensive. Not only that, custodial sentences do nothing to help the addict's problems and only make matters worse. You wouldn't put an alcoholic in prison so why jail a drug addict? Jennifer May, Sunderland [end]
THE war on drugs hasn't succeeded and we need fresh ideas on how to tackle the problem. But that's not to say we should legalise drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin. That would be foolish and dangerous. David Cameron is right to say that decriminalising recreational drugs would send out the wrong message to our children. Drugs leave a trail of misery wherever they are found. If anything, there should be stiffer penalties for convicted drug dealers and users. Nick Clegg is naive to call for laws to be relaxed. James Clark, Bristol [end]
Brian Dalton (letter, 30 October) is right to believe that we are sleepwalking into Ukip having a say in the next government. We are likely to get to this position on a very low turnout because, as Conservatives and Labour have identical policies, and we don't want to vote for minor party, there is nothing we can vote for. The first question on last night's Question Time demonstrated the dilemma we face. The Home Office has produced a report suggesting the hard line on drugs is ineffective. Many believe (myself included) that while drug dealers should get stiff prison sentences those merely possessing and taking drugs should be treated as victims rather than criminals, in the same way that the police should treat abused 13-year-old girls as victims and not prostitutes. [continues 139 words]
My blood boils when I hear loony liberal politicians (I'm thinking Nick Clegg) and middle class do-gooders telling us that ALL drugs should be legalised. That heroin, crack cocaine and LSD should all be freely available - even to teenagers. Their argument is that if the State was in charge of the drugs industry instead of criminal gangs then the drugs wouldn't be toxic and fewer people would die. And there'll be more of that silly talk in the coming weeks thanks to a Home Office report trumpeted by Clegg - which claims punitive laws have no effect on curbing drug use. [continues 604 words]
A Psychology of Macho Law-Making Steers Policy - in Defiance of Public Opinion and Common Sense The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no. Parliament's response to this week's report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britain's elite. It has got over past obsessions with whipping, hanging, sodomy and abortion, but it is still stuck on drugs. There is no point in reading the latest research on drugs policy worldwide. It is spitting in the wind. The only research worth doing is on why drugs policy reduces politicians to gibbering wrecks. [continues 961 words]
Prime Minister Rejects New Call for Decriminalisation Lib Dems Condemn Tories' 'Backward-Looking View' David Cameron yesterday set his face against a change in UK drugs policy after the Liberal Democrat crime-prevention minister Norman Baker hailed a Home Office-commissioned report finding "no obvious" link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use. Baker, minister responsible for drugs, said the report meant the genie was out of the bottle and was not going back in. He said: "I think the days of robotic, mindless rhetoric are over, because the facts and the evidence will no longer allow that." [continues 630 words]
DAVID Cameron ruled out relaxing Britain's drug laws yesterday, despite Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Tory MPs calling for a review. The Prime Minister said the current approach was working and decriminalising "recreational" drugs use would send out the wrong message to the nation's children. Mr Clegg blasted the current policy as "totally misplaced, outdated and backward" and called on the Prime Minister to "have some courage" and accept that the war on drugs is failing. Punishments The Deputy Prime Minister spoke after a Home Office report published yesterday found no evidence that strict punishments for drug takers led to a reduction in the number taking illegal narcotics. [continues 257 words]
DAVID CAMERON is refusing Liberal Democrat calls to review the Government's drugs policy, warning that as a parent he does not want to send out the message that taking illegal substances is "OK or safe". The Prime Minister insisted that the current approach to drugs was having an impact as abuse was falling, following a major Coalition row sparked by a Home Office report backed by the Lib Dems that suggested easing laws on hard drugs would not increase the number of users. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday attacked the Tory party's "facile" and "frightened" approach to drugs after Downing Street distanced itself from the report. Mr Cameron said yesterday that changing Britain's drugs policy would be "dangerous". [continues 180 words]
You'd Expect Drug Use to Go Up - But, Surprisingly, a Major Report Has Found That Sometimes It Actually Drops. A man lies on the floor in a squalid bedsit, a rubber rope tied around one arm, a needle in his hand. The door bursts open and two armed police officers run in. They take in the scene and swiftly find a bag of powder. What should they do next? The answer depends on the country they're in. The Home Office has published a major report into drug use across various countries, apparently surprising even itself with the findings. "We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country's enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country," the report said. [continues 1182 words]
DAVID Cameron clashed with Nick Clegg today in a furious Coalition bustup over drugs policy. In a surprisingly hard-hitting attack on the Liberal Democrats, Downing Street bluntly ruled out a "reckless" move towards decriminalisation. "The Lib-Dem policy would see drug dealers getting off scot-free and send an incredibly dangerous message to young people about the risks of taking drugs," a No 10 source said. But Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg tore into his Coalition partners over a report on international drugs policy which the Lib-Dems claim the Conservatives have sought to suppress. [continues 330 words]
Home Office Fact-Finders Reveal Long-Delayed Report Legalisation Policies Do Not Result in Wider Use The Home Office comparison of international drug laws, published today, represents the first official recognition since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that there is no direct link between being "tough on drugs" and tackling the problem. The report, which has been signed off by both the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat crime prevention minister, Norman Baker, is based on an in-depth study of drug laws in 11 countries ranging from the zero-tolerance of Japan to the legalisation of Uruguay. [continues 716 words]
No party ever won or lost an election because of its drug policy. Yet it is a subject that strikes fear in the hearts of most politicians and leaves them deaf to demands for a review or reform. They are locked in the old wisdom that if drug use is harmful the best way of tackling it is punishment, too timid to examine the facts or challenge conventional thinking - even though a significant number of ministers in both past and present cabinets, including the prime minister, admit that they have experimented with drugs themselves. Only the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has consistently argued that policy should be based on an examination of what works. [continues 645 words]
Home Office Study Finds No Evidence That Harsh Sentencing Curbs Illegal Use There is no evidence that tough enforcement of the drug laws on personal possession leads to lower levels of drug use, according to the government's first evidence-based study. Examining international drug laws, the groundbreaking Home Office document published today brings to an end 40 years of almost unbroken official political rhetoric that only harsher penalties can tackle the problem caused by the likes of heroin, cocaine or cannabis. [continues 852 words]
First Commons Debate for a Generation Offers Rare Chance for Honest Discussion Suppressed Home Office Report Casts Doubt on Current Punitive Approach A punitive approach to drug abuse including locking up addicts fails to curb levels of addiction, a Home Office study warns today, as MPs stage the first Commons debate on drugs legislation in a generation. The report suggests treating possession of drugs as a health rather than criminal matter reduces drug deaths and HIV infection rates without increasing addiction levels. [continues 1081 words]
The long-delayed report released by the Home Office highlights how its own approach to drugs is not based on evidence. In particular, the report which looks at the effectiveness of other countries' drug policies concludes that harsh penalties for drug users have no effect on levels of drug use. That punitive drug laws have a deterrent effect is a key assumption underpinning both the UK's approach and prohibitionist drug policy more broadly. The report says: "We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country's enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country." [continues 382 words]
Let Common Sense Prevail When at Last the Commons Opens Itself Up to a Debate on Drugs Few areas of public policy are as badly served by our political classes as that governing drug use. There is very little incentive for any politician even to suggest a rational approach to the problem. If the press doesn't finish off your career, then your political opponents, usually hypocritically, will use the supposedly maverick suggestion as a golden opportunity to smear and discredit you. If you happen to be a progressive sort, you will be dubbed "high on tax and soft on drugs" or the like, quite often by people who are even on the left themselves people who should know better and who, in reality, but very privately, most likely share the same outlook. [continues 511 words]
CANNABIS is seen as a harmful and dangerous drug but many believe it should be declassified. This year Brighton became home to a new campaign group which openly uses the drug in public and is fighting to make it legal. FLORA THOMPSON reports... WALK through The Lanes on a Saturday afternoon and you may see someone casually lighting up a cannabis 'joint'. Members of the Brighton Cannabis Club flout the law in public as part of their bid to make the drug legal. [continues 773 words]
Inside United Kingdom
