A definitive 20-year study into the effects of long-term cannabis use has demolished the argument that the drug is safe. Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found. The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs advisor to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain. Professor Hall found: One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it, [continues 1173 words]
For All the Policing and Prosecuting, There Is No Effect on Levels of Drug Use Evidence is mounting that our drug laws are not working. New analysis from Release and the London School of Economics shows beyond doubt that the way in which they are implemented is highly discriminatory, ineffective, and counterproductive. Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are spent every year on arresting and processing people for possessing drugs, with no discernible impact on drug markets or levels of use. Meanwhile, thousands of otherwise law-abiding people receive criminal records, and many poor and minority communities deal daily with the feeling that the police are unfairly targeting them. [continues 381 words]
Top Crime Writer Calls for Supervised Zones to Cut Heroin and Crack Deaths Brighton is set to be the first British city to offer official "drug consumption rooms" where addicts can use heroin, crack and cocaine under supervision without fear of prosecution. The city's public health leaders will meet this summer to "give serious consideration" to the plan in order to save lives. Brighton has one of the UK's highest drug-related death rates, with 104 fatalities between 2009 and 2011. An estimated 2,000 people in the city have a serious abuse problem. A report published this week from an independent drugs commission led by the crime author Peter James and Mike Trace, a former UK deputy drugs tsar, is expected to say that drug consumption rooms "significantly reduce overdose death rates" and do not encourage further use. [continues 415 words]
The War on Drugs was lost a long time ago. The fact that most people don't see the relationship between the war on drugs and alcohol prohibition is one of the greatest marketing feats of the 20th century. Prohibition doesn't work. Millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted every year arresting and imprisoning drug users. One of the results is this shameful statistic: The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners, according the New York Times. [continues 699 words]
Obama and Cameron Are Wrong. the Momentum Is Building for a More Rational Way of Dealing With This Problem When Barack Obama and David Cameron wrote a joint opinion piece for The Times last week, their first sentence was: "Both of us came of age during the 1980s." Those of us of a similar age know what that meant: an adolescence spent in a haze of post-punk, reggae, acid house and dope. Obama has admitted smoking cannabis and taking cocaine; Cameron refuses to confirm or deny that he inhaled anything, but the nod and the wink are hard to miss. [continues 1176 words]
The long battle to break the link between drug addiction and criminal behaviour is being won, a ground-breaking study into the long-term success rates of treatment programmes suggests. Nearly a half of all addicts who participated in drug courses in 2005 have been found to be free from addiction and no longer committing crime four years after leaving treatment. For those with cannabis or cocaine habits the success rates are as high as 69 per cent and 64 per cent respectively. [continues 575 words]
The Government's new drugs tsar is listed as an adviser to a shadowy foundation run by an aristocrat lobbying to liberalise laws on mind-altering drugs. Professor Les Iversen is head of the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which is currently at the centre of the debate over regulating mephedrone -- known as M-Cat or Meow Meow. But the Beckley Foundation, a controversial charity campaigning against anti-drug regulations, claims he is one of its key advisers. [continues 1398 words]
************ By Andrew Taylor (AP) WASHINGTON - The House voted Friday to lift a ban on using taxpayer dollars for needle exchange programs for intravenous drug users intended to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases. The vote to lift a longstanding ban on federal aid for such programs - - in place since 1988 - came after a brief but passionate debate on an amendment by Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., to keep the ban in place. His amendment failed by a 211-218 vote. [continues 431 words]
Flying in the face of all the evidence, the UN is about to recommit to the tried and failed approach Ten years ago, I represented Britain at a UN general assembly special session in New York, where political leaders reviewed progress in tackling the illegal drug market, and set out a 10-year plan to eliminate the illicit production and use of drugs such as cannabis, heroin and cocaine. Fast forward to this week in Vienna - where a similar gathering is tasked with reviewing progress and setting out a framework for international drug controls for the decade to come - and the lack of headway is striking. [continues 522 words]
The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for the next 10 years. The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent. Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few large developing or transitional countries." [continues 588 words]
The harm caused by prohibition is staggering, yet still politicians cling to the blinkered ambition of a global 'war on drugs' This year marks the 100th anniversary of global drug prohibition, and what an inglorious centenary it is when we consider the millions of lives that have been blighted as a consequence of the war on drugs. And yet the majority of governments have supported a worldwide ban on the cultivation, distribution and use of psychoactive substances ever since the signing of the Shanghai convention, which aimed to target opium use, in 1909. [continues 838 words]
The Vatican has been accused of putting the lives of thousands at risk by attempting to influence UN drugs policy on the eve of a major international declaration. The Vatican's objection to "harm reduction" strategies, such as needle exchange schemes, has ignited a fierce debate between the US and the EU over how drugs should be tackled. A new UN declaration of intent is due to be signed in Vienna on 11 March. However, there are major disagreements between member countries over whether a commitment to "harm reduction" should be included in the document, which is published every 10 years. [continues 423 words]
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR? : At issue is whether a pledge on 'harm reduction' should be included in the next UN declaration of intent, or if a 'drug-free' line will be kept. A rift between the EU and US over how to deal with global trafficking in illicit drugs is undermining international efforts to agree a new UN strategy. The confrontation has been heightened because of suggestions that the US negotiating team is pushing a hard-line, Bush administration "war on drugs," in contrast to the EU position, which supports "harm reduction" measures such as needle exchanges. [continues 397 words]
A rift between the EU and US over how to deal with global trafficking in illicit drugs is undermining international efforts to agree a new UN strategy. The confrontation has been heightened because of suggestions that the US negotiating team is pushing a hardline, Bush administration "war on drugs", in contrast to the EU position which supports "harm reduction" measures such as needle exchanges. Talks are said to be at breaking point in Vienna where representatives have gathered to hammer out a new UN declaration in time for a signing ceremony at a drugs summit in mid-March. Negotiations, which have been going on for three months, are due to resume tomorrow with no indication of a breakthrough. [continues 350 words]
Ketamine for depression and LSD for improving brain power; meet the lady who funds the science that no-one else will do, Amanda Feilding is on a mission to unlock the secrets of the mind Many people will enjoy some yoga or meditation this weekend. Both practices have proven health benefits, but for some people knowing that it works is never enough. They have to know why it works - what is really happening in the brain - and they will stop at nothing to find out, even if it means initiating and funding the research themselves. [continues 1434 words]
The arbitrary distinctions at the root of prohibition. By Jacob Sullum http://www.reason.com/news/show/124980.html The March 2008 MAPS' Email News Update is now available online. This issue, written by author David Jay Brown, discusses MAPS' Swiss LSD/End-of-Life Anxiety study, the upcoming third edition of LSD Psychotherapy, MAPS' new MDMA/PTSD study in Canada, MAPS' involvement in the upcoming World Psychedelic Forum and 2008 Boom festival and a whole lot more... [continues 437 words]
Call to Modernise Approach to Heroin Use THE UK'S former deputy drugs tsar Mike Trace has said Scotland needs to be more "brave and creative" and introduce controversial drug consumption rooms (DCRs) as part of its drug strategy. Trace, now chief executive of the International Drug Policy Consortium, a non-governmental organisation, spoke to the Sunday Herald ahead of his first visit to Scotland. He will speak at the Scottish Drugs Forum's Annual General Meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday about the implications of global drug policy on Scotland. [continues 667 words]
Prisoners have revealed that drugs are so rife in open prisons that they are seeking transfers to higher security jails to avoid them. Inmates are deliberately walking out of prison or reoffending so as to avoid being pressured into buying heroin, cannabis or crack cocaine. Mike Trace, chief executive of Rapt, the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust, the main prisons drugs charity, and formerly the deputy drugs czar, said lax conditions in open prisons were undoing the good work of the government's UKP80m-a-year antidrugs programme. [continues 646 words]
Duncan Smith Believes That Spliff-Smoking Is Such a Catastrophe That Cannabis Needs Reclassifying The Quiet Man is turning up the volume once more - and this time, he wants to drown out the demon dealers of the demon weed. Iain Duncan Smith (remember him?) is back with a fat report into how to end poverty in Britain. The sections demanding the financial punishment of single mothers have already been pored over and torn up for their sociological illiteracy. But there is a yet-to-be-noticed section of the new Tory plans that would have an even more bracingly reactionary effect - and send your own odds of being a victim of crime sky-rocketing. [continues 1037 words]
Heroin from Afghanistan will flow into Britain for at least another 10 years despite a multi-million-pound effort to combat the trade, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Senior Western officials in Kabul have admitted for the first time that they are resigned to Afghanistan being a major source of heroin for at least a decade because the country's crippled economy is so dependent on the industry. "There's no magic bullet," one senior Whitehall official said. "It's a long-term campaign over many years." [continues 201 words]
