Sir, An online image with your article "GPs to be allowed prescribe medicinal cannabis" (August 15th), shows the cannabis available on prescription in the Netherlands, known as Bedrocan. This is cannabis grown in the Netherlands by a pharmaceutical company, standardised and available in ground form in the containers that you show, through doctor's prescription and pharmacies.

However, the article itself refers to the whole cannabis extract, Sativex, as created by the UK pharmaceutical company GW Pharmaceuticals, supplied in spray form in alcohol, and in the UK often denied patients due to the high cost which is many times more than that of the raw materials.

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Over the past five years, the Bay Area has seen a 75 per cent drop in drug arrests. This is partly because of California's evolving drug laws but, according to a recent report in the San Francisco Examiner, it has more to with a "philosophical shift" in local law enforcement. It seems appropriate, then, that the US Attorney General this week chose San Francisco as the venue to signal the Obama administration's own philosophical shift on drug enforcement.

Addressing the American Bar Association's conference in the city on Monday, Eric Holder said he would instruct prosecutors to cease listing drug quantities in minor indictments. The law obliges judges to mete out mandatory minimum sentences to offenders, depending on the volume of drugs involved. But if that volume goes unmentioned, judges will be free to order lesser sentences. A modest proposal, but one that could herald a momentous trend: the winding down of America's 40-year war on drugs.

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NEXT year the stupidest policy in human history will celebrate its centenary in pretty good shape. You can make a convincing case that the absurdly named War on Drugs was born in 1914, with the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Act in America. Restricting the sale and manufacture of substances such as cocaine, heroin and cannabis, this was the United States' first federal drug policy.

Of course, 1914 was also the year another Great War broke out. It's a grim business comparing wars but needs must. The First World War, as it is also known, lasted four years and led to perhaps 37 million deaths. The War on Drugs has lasted a century but its casualties cannot be calculated.

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Uruguay is brave and right to legalise cannabis.

And so at last we have a country that is bowing to the demands of logic, common sense and sound policy by becoming the first in the world to regulate the production, distribution and sale of cannabis. Uruguay's House of Representatives has passed the necessary bill, which now only needs the approval of the Senate.

This is a hugely significant moment in the long march from hysteria to sanity that is the so-called war on drugs. The case for ending prohibition is a combination of principle and practicality. In principle, this newspaper believes that the state has no business stopping people from doing something that might harm themselves, so long as it doesn't harm others. A century of evidence shows that criminalising drugs increases rather than decreases the harm to others.

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With the holiday season in full swing, the Public Health Agency (PHA) and Council for the Homeless have come together to issue harm reduction advice for drug users.

Brendan Bonner, Acting Assistant Director, Health Improvement, PHA said; "The summer has always been a time when we are more likely to see an increase in binge drinking. In the past the PHA has issued warnings about managing your alcohol consumption, particularly during summer festivals and sporting events, as alcohol consumption in the warm weather increases the risk of dehydration and overheating.

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MP Wants Law Change to Stop Over-The-Counter Sale of Seeds

MP Sir Roger Gale is demanding a change in the law so shops like Canterbury's UK Skunkworks are banned from selling cannabis seeds.

The Tory member for Thanet North, which includes Herne Bay, tabled a parliamentary question calling for the trade in seeds to be strictly licensed.

At the moment, anyone can go into a shop such as Skunkworks in Northgate to buy the seeds and then grow the class B drug even though it is illegal to buy it in its adult form.

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Roadside Tests to Tackle 'Menace That Ruins Lives'

MOTORISTS who get behind the wheel after smoking cannabis face losing their licence for at least a year under a "one spliff and you're over the limit" crackdown.

Ministers today proposed a "zero tolerance" policy on people who drive after using illegal drugs. Nearly 9,000 drivers are expected to face prosecution a year.

Motorists found guilty will face an automatic driving ban as well as possibly jail of up to six months and a fine of up to UKP5,000.

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THERESA May overruled her own drug advisers yesterday to ban a herbal stimulant linked with Islamist extremism.

The Home Secretary said that if she failed to act Britain could become a transit route for illegally shipping khat to mainland Europe.

The amphetamine-like substance is already banned in most European countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Ireland.

Security experts have warned that proceeds from selling the drug could be funding Islamist extremist groups such as al-Shabab.

Mrs May said that khat, which is popular among Somalis in the UK, would become a Class C drug like anabolic steroids.

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It is possible to buy nearly anything online, so it should not be a shock that drug dealers ply their evil trade over the internet. Yet there is something chilling about our report today which reveals that potentially lethal narcotics, including the ecstasy-type drug linked to the deaths of eight young people in the province, are readily available at the click of a mouse. In most people's imagination drug deals are done in back alleys or in crowded nightclubs, but obviously new technology has been harnessed to streamline the operation.

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Drug taking comes second only to the spectre of paedophilia in its ability to get the public in a panic. Both evoke a murky, squalid underworld populated by depraved ghouls intent on getting their kicks.

And when illicit drugs cause a spate of sudden deaths - eight people have lost their lives over recent weeks in Northern Ireland, in apparently drug-related circumstances - the fear and loathing is cranked up still higher. Who to blame? Who to punish? Which shadowy figures can be dragged forth into the daylight and held to account?

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A sense of panic and fear has gripped loyalist areas after official warnings of a possible link between the "sudden and unexplained" deaths of eight young people and dangerous designer drug PMA.

Families and friends of Belfast men Gareth 'Big Henry' Morrison, Andy McCann and Alan 'Alio' McKenzie are mourning the loss of their loved ones.

Sunday Life was told yesterday that the family of 26-year-old Sandy Row man Gareth Morrison, who died last Sunday, were still too upset to talk about their loss.

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A drugs panel -- including Sussex's police commissioner -- has slammed suggestions Brighton and Hove should introduce shooting galleries for addicts.

The comments come just weeks after Brighton and Hove City Council launched a feasibility study into the proposal.

Andy Winter, chief executive of Brighton Housing Trust, said the independent report, which championed the scheme among a host of other options, had done a "huge disservice" to the debate surrounding addiction in the city.

Speaking at the Drugs and Alcohol Today conference, the veteran social worker said the report had put the debate back "five or ten years" adding "the sooner we forget about it the better".

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It is not every day that a recovering heroin addict shares a stage with the Mayor of London to discuss drugs on BBC's Question Time.

But during last broadcast, Russell Brand sat beside Boris Johnson and spoke openly about his former addiction and his ideas for solving Britain's addiction problems.

The comedian, who called David Dimbleby "mate" and Boris Johnson "man" throughout the programme, showed his serious side when asked whether drug laws were working in the UK.

He said: "I don't think drug laws are working because people take drugs all the time. People will take drugs because of social, psychological and emotional reasons.

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SIR Paul McCartney's son has opened his heart about the death of his mother Linda and how his subsequent descent into drink and drugs caused a massive rift with his father.

James McCartney, 35, says he still idolises Kurt Cobain, the rock star who shot himself

James McCartney, 35, turned to drugs to help with the grief of losing his mother from cancer when he was 20.

Modelling himself on Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain - a heroin addict who killed himself with a shotgun - James went off the rails for years.

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"Laws have not been updated despite scientific advances" Professor David Nutt

INTERNATIONAL drug laws have set back key areas of scientific research including potential medical treatments, a controversial former government drugs adviser has warned.

Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College London, said United Nations conventions on drugs have led to some of the most scandalous examples of scientific censorship in modern times.

Along with another former government adviser, Leslie King, and Professor David Nichols of the University of North Carolina, Prof Nutt argues that psychoactive drugs used in research should be exempted from severe restrictions.

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The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD amounts to "the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo", the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt claimed.

Prof Nutt, who was dismissed from the Home Office's advisory council on drugs in 2009 after clashing with ministers, said that UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s had delayed the development of "innovative treatments" for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression by 30 years.

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MORE and more cannabis users are needing hospital treatment for mental disorders after smoking super-strength skunk, drug campaigners warned last night.

The numbers admitted for treatment have increased by 50 per cent in three years and the campaigners blame permissive policing, including the use of cautions and spot fines.

Mary Brett of Cannabis Skunk Sense said: 'We need an end to the authorities turning a blind eye to cannabis as if it is a harmless substance.'

Department of Health figures show that in 2008-9 some 651 admissions were recorded in England relating to a diagnosis of 'mental or behavioural disorder due to use of cannabinoids'. For 2011-12, the figure had risen to more than 1,000. Skunk is five times as potent as traditional cannabis.

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THE NUMBER of Scots admitted to hospital because of cannabis use rocketed by 50% in just five years, new figures have revealed.

The figures, from NHS Scotland's Information Services Division, show there were 609 people taken into hospital because of their cannabis use in 2011-12, up from 406 just five years before.

Now experts are calling on the Scottish Government to do more to warn people about the dangers of cannabis.

They claim cannabis can have a detrimental effect on mental health, particularly for a small number of vulnerable users who have an inherited predisposition to schizophrenia.

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European governments and the Obama administration are this weekend studying a "gamechanging" report on global drugs policy that is being seen in some quarters as the beginning of the end for blanket prohibition.

Publication of the Organisation of American States (OAS) review, commissioned at last year's Cartagena Summit of the Americas attended by Barack Obama, reflects growing dissatisfaction among Latin American countries with the current global policy on illicit drugs. It spells out the effects of the policy on many countries and examines what the global drugs trade will look like if the status quo continues. It notes how rapidly countries' unilateral drugs policies are evolving, while at the same time there is a growing consensus over the human costs of the trade. "Growing media attention in many countries, including on social media, reflects a world in which there is far greater awareness of the violence and suffering associated with the drug problem," Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the OAS, says in a foreword to the review.

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You wouldn't know it from listening to UK officials but a game-changing debate is taking place in the Americas about the war on drugs. There is a growing belief that the current punitive-based approach has failed. It has visited a savage level of violence on Latin America as narco cartels, moving cocaine and cannabis into the US, have butchered and bribed their way through the continent. The killing and corrupting of public officials judges, police, politicians threatened, and still threatens, to demolish the institutions of those states.

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