Cannabis is obtained from the plant of the genus Cannabis. Cannabis is the only drug that grows in Sri Lanka. It is grown illicitly, mostly in the dry zones of the country (in the Eastern and Southern provinces). Cannabis causes euphoria, "high" feeling, pleasurable state of relaxation, impaired performance, sleepiness, confusion and hallucinations. Cocaine Cocaine, which is obtained from the plant of genus Erythroxylon coca, is available as a paste, or "Crack" hard white rocks or flaky material. Cocaine is smoked, sniffed or injected. It causes euphoria and alertness and postpones hunger and fatigue. [continues 991 words]
Drug Crop Eradication Devastates the Environment and Forces Producers Underground, Often to Areas With Fragile Ecosystems. UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) - As the call for the decriminalisation of drugs steadily picks up steam worldwide, a new study by a British charity concludes there has been no significant reduction in the global use of illicit drugs since the creation of three key UN anti-drug conventions, the first of which came into force over half a century ago. "Illicit drugs are now purer, cheaper, and more widely used than ever," says the report, titled Casualties of War: How the War on Drugs is Harming the World's Poorest, released Thursday by the London-based Health Poverty Action. [continues 688 words]
CANNABIS use in Western Australia fell markedly after it was decriminalised - contrary to comments by Police Minister Rob Johnson that it had grown "extensively". Mr Johnson told reporters today that when former WA Labor premier Geoff Gallop decriminalised the smoking, possession and cultivation of small amounts of marijuana in 2004, he presided over a surge in drug use. "We became known as the cannabis capital of Australia and we saw cannabis use grow extensively," Mr Johnson said. "If you start decriminalising it, what you see is an increase in use." [continues 358 words]
Hannah isn't just the girl next door. She's a teacher who cultivates cannabis on the side. Meet the middle-class growers with a taste for easy money and uneasy morals Meet Alex. He is 26, handsome, privately educated, and, for most of his week, a freelance director of documentaries. His wardrobe is immaculately shabby: designer jeans, cast-off T-shirts and vintage trainers. The kitchen of his boutique Victorian terraced house is decked with a vast, chrome Smeg refrigerator, a dining table for 12, and two sinks so deep you could bathe in them. He's just had Velux windows put in, so the room catches the morning light. He also has big plans for the garden. [continues 3020 words]
THE medical benefits of marijuana are only marginal - although worth having for the seriously ill ("On the quiet, the US is legalising marijuana", Andrew Sullivan, News Review, November 1). However, this side of marijuana is being widely abused in California as a semi-legal way of obtaining the drug. The hazards of smoking marijuana remain. Cannabis smoke contains higher concentrations of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke, and smokers generally inhale more smoke for longer, depositing more than four times as much tar in their lungs as cigarette smokers. A heavy smoker of cannabis-and-tobacco joints (more than 10 a day), substantially increases their risk of contracting lung disease including cancer, as well as heart attacks and stroke. [continues 64 words]
I can only add this to Sullivan's excellent analysis on the end of marijuana prohibition: public safety will improve. During my 18 years of police service in the USA, I saw the use of alcohol being the proximate cause of about 1,300 calls. These included murder, suicide, rape, assault, child abuse and spouse abuse. The use of cannabis generated zero calls, and the use of cocaine, one. My colleagues currently waste more than 10m road patrol hours searching several million cars in order to bust someone for 1-20 grams of cannabis. Meanwhile, the drunk drivers sail past. Howard Wooldridge Citizens Opposing Prohibition Washington DC, USA [end]
A good friend of mine, an almost lifelong heroin user who, more recently, has diversified into crack cocaine and therefore requires a quick blast from an oxygen cylinder before going for a walk, rang me not so long ago with a warning: "Rod, I'm worried about your drinking," he said. "You've really got to look after yourself." I couldn't speak for a few moments, out of incredulity and indignation; I consume on average half a bottle of wine per day, which is too much, sure - but to be lectured by a crack-addled skaghead with half a lung and the facial complexion of that character in Munch's The Scream seemed, to me, pushing it. [continues 603 words]
The head of Britain's leading medical research organisation rounded on the government yesterday for sacking its principal drugs adviser. Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said scientists must be allowed to give "unfettered advice without the fear of reprisal". His criticism followed the abrupt dismissal of David Nutt on Friday. This weekend Nutt said many of his colleagues on the advisory council on the misuse of drugs, which he chaired, could resign in protest. "I wouldn't be surprised if some of them stepped down," he said. "Maybe all of them will." [continues 267 words]
The Humble Joint Can Save Lives. We Look Forward to the End of Senseless Prohibition You know things are shifting in America when Fortune magazine, the bible for business journalism, runs a cover story titled "Is pot already legal?". You also know it when Barack Obama's Department of Justice publishes a long-expected memo signalling that the federal government will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries if they are legal under state law. That happened formally this month. It was not, moreover, a symbolic gesture. Marijuana for medical reasons -- to tackle chemotherapy-induced nausea or Aids-related wasting or glaucoma, among other conditions -- is now legal in 13 states, including the biggest, California. Next year, 13 more states are planning referendums or new laws following suit. Last week a California legislative committee held the first hearings not simply on whether medical marijuana should remain legal, but on whether all marijuana should be decriminalised, full stop. The incentive? The vast amounts of money the bankrupt state could raise by taxing cannabis. [continues 888 words]
Mr Barnett says the Government will introduce legislation this week to repeal WA's Cannabis Control Act of 2003. He will also seek to make changes to the 1981 Misuse of Drugs Act and the Young Offenders Act of 1994, saying it will send a clear message that the Government does not endorse illicit drug use. Mr Barnett said the cannabis-related legislation was the first in a series of steps the Government would take to send a clear anti-drugs message to the community and toughen penalties for people who broke the law through drug-related offences. [continues 714 words]
HEMP Resources is suing the WA Government for $255 million in its latest stoush with the Department of Agriculture and Food. In 2004, shortly after lobbying the government to pass the Industrial Hemp Act, Hemp Resources applied for an industrial hemp licence from the registrar of hemp, Mark Holland. The licence was denied on grounds that two of the company's directors, Kim Hough and Luu Phoc Nguyen, had minor criminal convictions. But the convictions were more than 10 years old and quashed under the Spent Convictions Act. Hemp Resources received its licence in February 2006. [continues 539 words]
A BRITISH agent has thrown the war against drug traffickers into chaos by leaving top secret information about covert operations on a bus in South America. In a blunder that has cost taxpayers millions of pounds and put scores of lives at risk, the drugs liaison officer lost a computer memory stick said to contain a list of undercover agents' names and details of more than five years of intelligence work. It happened when the MI6-trained agent left her handbag on a transit coach at El Dorado airport in Bogota, Colombia. Intelligence chiefs were forced to wind up operations and relocate dozens of agents and informants amid fears the device could fall into the hands of drugs barons. [continues 134 words]
The Panic Spread Fast When an Undercover British Officer Mislaid Key Secrets in a Colombian Airport AS the plane from Ecuador began its descent into the Colombian capital of Bogota, Agent T must have felt a shiver of excitement about her new assignment. She was being posted to the drugs capital of the world - where she had secured a role gathering intelligence in the war against the global cocaine trade worth UKP 50 billion a year. An undercover customs officer with Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), she would be responsible for dozens of undercover agents providing vital information on Colombia's drugs cartels. The job involved liaising with MI5 and MI6, the British security and intelligence services, and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). [continues 1004 words]
WITH its backdrop of snow-capped mountains facing the Pacific Ocean and relaxed life-style, Vancouver was once bracketed among the world's most desirable cities. It has been ranked with Zurich and Vienna as having the highest quality of living and sits alongside Cape Town and Sydney for its natural beauty. Not any more: with shootings on the rise and drug gangs fighting over turf, the city's image is suffering just before it hosts the Winter Olympics. Criminologists are calling it Vancouver's "year of the gun". [continues 638 words]
In the museum of organised crime, Pablo Escobar deserves a room of his own. He was the first gangster billionaire, listed by Forbes magazine in 1989 as the world's seventh richest man; in the late 1980s he offered to pay Colombia's national debt as a way of fending off the ever-present threat of extradition to America. The rise of his cocaine-trafficking organisation, the Medellin cartel, triggered a period of mayhem unprecedented even by the standards of Colombia's modern history. [continues 811 words]
Imagine a single policy measure that could wipe out criminal gangs, improve the health of the nation, transform the Irish legal system, empty our prisons, deal a blow to international terrorism and boost government tax revenues. I'm talking about legalising drugs. Yet, extraordinary as it seems, there is little or no support for such a measure. I suspect that will change in the next few years. Ireland has a drug prohibition policy that isn't working. The latest report on Irish crime statistics from the CSO shows crime levels in every category falling with one obvious exception: controlled drug offences. Indeed, many of the worst crimes in other categories - gangland killings, for example - are a consequence of our failing prohibition policy. [continues 631 words]
Guns Are Pouring South Of The Border While Murder And Kidnap Are Flowing North BY THE hair-raising standards of torture, murder, kidnapping, extortion and other drug-related mayhem that has become tragically routine along the US border with Mexico, the inspection of a battered red Ford pickup truck travelling south through the Arizona desert this month hardly seemed worth recording. US border patrol agents stopped the vehicle as it headed towards Mexico through the Organ Pipe Cactus national park. A search quickly uncovered seven assault rifles - two of them Russian-made AK47s - a couple of handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. [continues 918 words]
Suspicion Grows That Heroin Dealer Was 'Permitted' To Import Hard Drugs The Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) is examining scores of drug seizures, arrests and covert operations involving Kieran Boylan, a convicted heroin dealer whose relationship with the force is the subject of a collusion inquiry following an expose by The Sunday Times. The garda ombudsman now suspects that Boylan was "permitted" to import huge quantities of heroin, cocaine and cannabis, which he supplied to low-level dealers, who were later arrested, while he continued to wholesale drugs to other criminal gangs. [continues 383 words]
Brandon Muir's Tragic Death Will Not Be The Last Of Its Kind We can put a name to the grainy face of the toddler in the news last week because of the way he died. But in Scotland today there are tens of thousands of children like Brandon Muir living chaotic, violent and perilous lives because of their parents' drug and alcohol addiction. Brandon was killed by Robert Cunningham, the boyfriend who had moved in with mother Heather Boyd just 18 days before the boy's death. The couple were heroin addicts. Glasgow high court heard Cunningham hit the two-year-old so hard in the abdomen, his intestine ruptured. But the child did not die until the next morning, and in that time Boyd took him to a party where he was left in a toilet, ignored by the drunk and drug-using adults. [continues 1048 words]
The Author Vilified For Kicking Out Her Drug-User Son - And Writing About It - Says Tough Love Cuts Both Ways Julie Myerson looks like a broken sparrow. "This has been a terrible week, today has been a terrible day and yesterday was one of the worst days," she says tremulously, raking a hand through her pale gold hair. Her fingers shake; she is on the verge of tears. She has reason. Last week she set off a storm when she revealed that her new book, The Lost Child, features a detailed account of her son's five-year struggle with cannabis and her own traumatic decision, when he was 17, to turn him out of the family home and change the locks. [continues 2595 words]
Pictures of the US Olympic Hero Smoking Pot Should Be Viewed As a Positive Sign I SPENT time in the pleasant company of a gentleman last week; a white-haired, young looking 73-year-old grandfather who has managed to do what intelligent people invariably do: that is, he has kept his mind open. Let us call him David, because that is his name. In the midst of our conversation, the subject of Michael Phelps surfaced. "The news," he said of the swimmer being photographed smoking marijuana from a bong, "was a great tragedy." Mindful of his seniority, it was with some reluctance that I questioned his conclusion. "Do you really mean tragedy? If you do, it shows that you haven't been father to teenage boys or young men for some time." He was surprised to be told that so many of today's teenagers and young men use pot. He found the news mildly shocking. [continues 665 words]
I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors. Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised. In eight months here there has not been the slightest unpleasantness with anyone. It is a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed nearly 50 years ago (before being expelled for insubordination) and is a sharp change of pace after 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph. I can report that a change is not always as good as a rest. [continues 728 words]
A pilot scheme is encouraging druggies to kick the habit by giving them money to donate to charity John Mooney Teenage drug addicts who agree to attend detoxification programmes will be offered a chance to get high on philanthropy instead. Young substance abusers in Ireland will be given financial donations for their favourite charities to help them to kick their habits. The Drug Treatment Centre Board (DTCB), an independent, government-funded organisation that offers support services to drug users in Dublin, has launched the initiative, which has already helped some addicts to rebuild their lives. [continues 472 words]
Stone Age humans could well have deserved the name. Scientists have found the drug paraphernalia used by prehistoric humans to cook up herbal mixtures to get themselves high. Scientists have long suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use but much of the evidence has been indirect, ranging from the bizarre images found in prehistoric cave art to the discovery of hemp seeds in excavations. Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to South American tribes. [continues 340 words]
Self-Confessed Drugs Laboratory Amanda Neidpath Wants to Change the Law. She Tells Why It could be a scene from a photo shoot for Country Life. A log fire crackles in the baronial hall of Beckley Park, Oxfordshire, a grand Tudor house whose ancient walls are hung with tapestries. Large vases cascade with fresh flowers. Outside, there is not one, but three moats. The lady of the manor, Amanda, Lady Neidpath, is dressed in velvet and tweed, with not a scrap of make-up on her face. Her appearance is arresting, in a shabby-chic manner. Only when she opens her mouth to speak is this deeply traditional scene somewhat shattered. [continues 1248 words]
Cocaine Overdoses Are Four Times Higher Than They Were Eight Years Ago - And A&E Departments Are Clearing Up The Mess It is 1am on a balmy night in one of the ritzier enclaves of west London, and at a four-storey Georgian terrace a party is in full swing. In the Philippe Starck-designed kitchen and imposing double-height living room, the thirtysomething guests - City bankers, yummy mummies and trustafarians - are engaged in animated chatter, while some are occupied by a raucous game of Twister. High spirits are buoyed by a plentiful supply of amphetamines and Colombia's finest white powder. The mood is boisterous. [continues 1031 words]
Face It, a Joint May Be a Lesser Menace Than Binge Drinking Apart from the fact that it is completely illegal and that I don't in any sense recommend or condone it, I don't actually think there is anything especially heinous about teenagers experimenting with the softer drugs. I'd prefer them to be tucked up in bed familiarising themselves with Kant or Spinoza, or going for 10-mile runs, but we do need to keep a degree of realism about these things. The reality is that for the majority of young people the odd period of light recreational drug use does little harm. I'm not talking about crack or heroin - but then most children don't experiment with crack or heroin. [continues 1002 words]
At last the incurably traumatised may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And controversially, the key to taming their demons is the 'killer' drug Ecstasy An Ecstasy tablet. That's what it took to make Donna Kilgore feel alive again - that and the doctor who prescribed it. As the pill began to take effect, she giggled for the first time in ages. She felt warm and fuzzy, as if she was floating. The anxiety melted away. Gradually, it all became clear: the guilt, the anger, the shame. [continues 4086 words]
Cautionary Tales About My Own Dabbling With Drugs May Only Have Fuelled My Son's Terrifying Descent One windy day in May 2002, my young children, Jasper and Daisy, who were eight and five years old, spent the morning colouring welcome banners for their brother's home-coming. They had not seen Nic, who was arriving from college for the summer, in six months. In the afternoon, we all drove to the airport to pick him up. At home in Inverness, north of San Francisco, Nic, who was then 19, lugged his duffel bag into his old bedroom. He unpacked and emerged with his arms loaded with gifts. Nic was a playful and affectionate big brother to Jasper and Daisy - when he wasn't robbing them. [continues 1746 words]
The Chief Constable Who Last Week Said Ecstasy Is Safer Than Aspirin Peddles His Drug Theory to Our Correspondent Few senior cops can boast such an electrifying record as Richard Brunstrom. He recently stunned himself with a Taser gun to prove the police device was not dangerous. Then he broke into his own headquarters at night to highlight a lack of security. And last week Brunstrom's sanity was questioned after he proclaimed that the illegal drug ecstasy was "a remarkably safe substance" – safer than aspirin. [continues 759 words]
Middle-class drug-taking doesn't stop with parenthood - in fact, among my friends it's rife. But it ain't pretty Fern Gilmour We'd all finished dinner, and we kicked off our shoes and watched as our host showed off his new Technics turntables, a present from his wife. It was his 40th-birthday party, and a group of us had come to stay at his house in Devon. One mum went upstairs to check all the children were asleep. Including my three-year-old, there were 10 children staying, aged from six months to five years. No sooner had we been given the all-clear than two of the five dads got out wraps of cocaine and began chopping out lines on the table. Are we a group of rock stars, DJs and supermodels? No, we're City bankers, lawyers, housewives, entrepreneurs: professional urbanites doing what many parents do on a fairly regular basis. [continues 858 words]
Government figures released last week reveal that fewer young people aged 16-24 are using cannabis. I don't know if this includes the current dynamic duo of self-destruction Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse, but there are signs that even they are having a change of heart and maybe habit. After a busy week in the courts, Doherty suggested that he is going to clean up his act. Winehouse also spoke last week about her "shame" over taking so many drugs. [continues 428 words]
Around 3500 Sri Lankans are living with HIV and the number is increasing rapidly as a newest trend of injecting drugs is becoming popular among many parties. Health Ministry STD/AIDS Control Programme National Director Dr. Nimal Edirisinghe told The Sunday Times that although there was a popular belief that injecting drugs was uncommon in Sri Lanka, at present it has been a major contributor to enhance the number of AIDS patients. "There is a popular fashion among youth going to nightclubs and parties to inject drugs, which creates a high risk. As there is a shortage of heroin drug addicts seem to opt for injecting drugs. We also got to know that some prisoners too are getting injected with drugs and in most of these cases the same needle is being used a few times," he said. [continues 70 words]
NO wonder the Liberal Democrats are all over the place: one of the contenders for the party leadership once declared that opium could be "safely experimented with" and that LSD "holds no surprises". This weekend Chris Huhne is discovering, just as David Cameron before him, that his undergraduate days at Oxford can come back to haunt him. Last night Huhne, 53, was doing his best to disown an article he appears to have written in an Oxford student magazine about the benefits of illegal hard drugs. [continues 738 words]
Parents who help their children buy soft drugs are sending the wrong signals So we're sitting on a shaded cafe terrace enjoying a leisurely aperitif as the sun sets over the Mediterranean. A mobile chirrups - text incoming - and one of the company of middle-class, middle-aged Brits scans her message. It' s from the teenage daughters who have been left at home in Bristol for the weekend. "They're after our dealer's number - they're planning a chilled night in and want something to smoke," explains the mother, who runs her own interior design agency, and texts back. Later, a fresh message confirms that the enterprising merchant has turned up on his bike and sold them some cannabis. Sorted. [continues 1148 words]
The Chattering Classes Are Heading to the Amazon in Search of Esoteric Highs. Are Shamans the New Shrinks? At a dinner party in Gloucestershire, Lucy, a mother of three, is regaling her guests with details of her last trip abroad. She has honeyed limbs and high-maintenance hair, suggestive of regular villa breaks in Ibiza or Tuscany. But earlier this year, as a 40th-birthday present to herself, she went to Brazil for a 10-day guided retreat in the Amazon, where she underwent a series of plant rituals involving the powerful hallucinogen ayahuasca. "It was as far removed from taking normal party drugs as you can imagine," she says, eyes glittering. "It was frightening and extraordinary." [continues 1200 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]
Doctors have issued their starkest warning yet about the effects of cannabis. A new report says users of the drug are 40% more likely to develop a psychotic illness. The warning, published in The Lancet, is written by seven specialists in mental health. They looked at the findings of 35 studies from around the world and discovered "a consistent association between cannabis use and psychotic symptoms, including disabling psychotic disorders". They say they cannot be certain that the drug is the direct cause of problems, but warn: "We believe there is now enough evidence to inform people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness." [continues 171 words]
CAR buyers who suspect they have parted with money for old rope may soon be right. Ministers are to spend more than UKP500,000 in an attempt to develop the world's first recyclable vehicle made from hemp. A deal between Defra, the environment department, Ford, the car manufacturer, and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis, could see hemp being used as the basis for a wide range of components. The fibrous qualities of their stalks means they can be used to make clothes, paper and ropes. [continues 674 words]
INDONESIAN Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who opposes legalising marijuana, doesn't mind the drug being used in cooking, a newspaper reported today. "It's alright to use it as a food seasoning, but it should not be fully legalised," Mr Kalla was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post. Mr Kalla was commenting on a recent study by two Indonesian agencies dealing with drug abuse that recommended the Government review its policy to outlaw the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, the Post said. [continues 193 words]
The Taleban Aren't Going To Like This . . . Britain leads a #1-billion-a-year international programme to eradicate illicit opium production in Afghanistan by destroying farmers' poppies and persuading them to grow other crops. As an anti-narcotics strategy, this programme is a demonstrable failure. In terms of counter-terrorism, it is a disaster. But a scheme unveiled this week can, finally, offer some hope. Six years into the eradication programme, Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world's opium, more than ever before. [continues 881 words]
HALF of the Scottish National party's shadow cabinet, who could be running the country within a week, have admitted smoking cannabis before they entered politics. Among those who said they had tried the drug are Nicola Sturgeon, the party' s deputy leader, Shona Robison, who could become Scotland's next health minister, and Fiona Hyslop, potentially the next schools minister. Others include Tricia Marwick, the SNP's housing spokeswoman, Stewart Maxwell, its culture spokesman, and Bruce Crawford, its business manager and campaign chief. [continues 541 words]
Two Mothers Tell Sian Griffiths Why Schools - and Parents - Must Do More to Stop Children Taking Drugs When Debra Bell's oldest son William started smoking cannabis he was just 14, a high-flying pupil predicted to score a string of A* grades at GCSE at a top London boys' school. His mother believes he smoked his first spliff on an exchange visit to the school's sister campus in Thailand and continued at sleepovers in classmates' houses. William had his own explanation for what he saw simply as a means of relaxing: "Cannabis . . . helped me unwind from stressful weeks at my previous public school. There I was amongst a rebellious 50-strong section of my year with whom I would drink and smoke," he wrote. [continues 895 words]
CANNABIS offenders are refusing to pay their fines. More than 30 per cent of offenders have ignored fines or refused to complete a cannabis education session since WA introduced softer cannabis laws three years ago. Of 9563 people issued with cannabis infringement notices since then, 4879 were referred to the Fines Enforcement Agency because they didn't pay fines or attend a one-hour counselling session. And 3079 of them have escaped scot-free. With WA football embroiled in one of the biggest drug scandals to hit the sport, the State Opposition yesterday called on the Government to scrap "the failed experiment", which was under review. [continues 248 words]
At long last some sense about drugs. The independent Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA, published a report last week in the hope of influencing a government drugs strategy review due next year. The report states that (surprise!) drugs policy has failed - and that it was driven by "moral panic" in the first place - and should be replaced with a system that recognises, among other things, that alcohol and tobacco can cause more harm than some illegal drugs. [continues 1036 words]
The US drug war is a threat to global stability. Afghanistan profits from the illicit heroin trade because of drug prohibition, not in spite of it. Attempts to limit the supply of drugs while demand remains constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. The various armed factions waging civil war in Colombia are financially dependent on the US drug war. Here, the distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make an easily grown weed like cannabis worth its weight in gold. Drug prohibition finances organised crime at home and terrorism abroad, which is then used to justify increased drug war spending. It's time to end this madness and instead treat all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public health problem it is. Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst, Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington [end]
ANY reflection on Afghan opium that does not mention the damage it inflicts on the populations of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan is incomplete (for example, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Report of 2006 estimates Iran has more than 1.2m opiate abusers, nearly 3% of the general population aged 15-64). A Eurocentric focus on demand is understandable from this end of the telescope but it distorts the picture (America is doped up in Colombia for a bad trip in Afghanistan, Comment, last week). [continues 161 words]
The US drug war is a threat to global stability. Afghanistan profits from the illicit heroin trade because of drug prohibition, not in spite of it. Attempts to limit the supply of drugs while demand remains constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. The various armed factions waging civil war in Colombia are financially dependent on the US drug war. Here, the distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand make an easily grown weed like cannabis worth its weight in gold. Drug prohibition finances organised crime at home and terrorism abroad, which is then used to justify increased drug war spending. It's time to end this madness and instead treat all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public health problem it is. Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst, Common Sense for Drug Policy, Washington [end]
As a former agent for an American intelligence agency I couldn't agree more with Simon Jenkins, but he has only scratched the surface. I am embarrassed by the current course that the United States has taken regarding the drug and terrorism wars. We are poking the hornets' nests with a stick and crying foul when we are stung. My own experience in the field would shock many. Craig Randall London N19 [end]
David Cameron was disciplined as a 16-year-old pupil at Eton for smoking cannabis, sources close to the Conservative leader admitted this weekend. Cameron, who has always refused to discuss whether he has used drugs, was reportedly caught up in a police investigation into drug dealing at his school. He was apparently "gated" - confined to school grounds - for two weeks after confessing to a master. A friend said the Tory leader and other schoolboys had been "snitched on" by pupils who had been dealing in the drug. A total of seven pupils were expelled following police inquiries, which are said to have included a search of pupils' rooms by a drugs squad. [continues 415 words]
