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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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FURTHER to the new cannabis study by Professor Wayne hall of King's College London (Mail), none of us calling for an end to the so-called War On Drugs is suggesting that cannabis (or any other drug) should be made available to adolescents.

I'm equally concerned about the potential harm caused by drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. But the appropriate responses are evidence-based public health interventions and sensible regulation.

Drug policies have neither curbed demand for illicit drugs nor reduced supply. They certainly haven't done anything to eliminate the risks Prof hall has identified. There are no greater obstacles to reducing harm than prohibition and the continued criminalisation of drug users.

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THE day after a Lib Dem vote to soften the law on cannabis comes a devastating analysis of 20 years' research into the drug's dangers, especially to the young.

Collated by Professor Wayne Hall, senior adviser to the World Health Organisation, the study finds that smoking cannabis is highly addictive, while doubling the risk of psychotic disorders, impairing brain function and affecting exam results. The Lib Dems claimed their relaxed approach to the drug was based on the 'latest evidence'. But that was Sunday.

In the light of the most comprehensive research ever, will they now change their minds? Or are they so wedded to the notion that cannabis is oh-so-liberal and trendy that they don't care a damn what damage it does to the young?

[end]

A drug derived from cannabis, which many with multiple sclerosis say helps ease their symptoms, has been ruled too expensive to be used by the NHS in England even though it is approved for Wales.

In new guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of people with the disabling disease, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says the price set by the manufacturer of Sativex (nabiximols) is too high for the benefit it gives patients. But the decision opens up the sort of "postcode lottery" that Nice was set up to end, with MS patients in Wales able to use the drug on the NHS while those in England either have to buy it themselves or go without. Some will use the illegal drug instead.

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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,

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THE WAR on drugs internationally cannot be won, crime prevention minister Norman Baker warned yesterday as he called for a "more logical and compassionate" approach to tackling the domestic problem.

Instead, he said he was interested in minimising the harm from drugs rather than continuing with a policy based on the "prejudices of yesterday".

The Liberal Democrat told delegates at the party's conference in Glasgow: "Medicinal cannabis is a very sensible objective to take forward.

"Why should people who are ill not have access to medicine which helps them when other medicine doesn't? And more to the point, they are made criminals when they access the cannabis themselves.

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THE WAR on drugs is based on "the prejudices of yesterday" and cannot be won, Crime Prevention Minister Norman Baker warned.

The Lib Dem said he was interested in minimising the harm from drugs rather than continuing to prosecute addicts.

The MP told delegates at the party's conference in Glasgow: "Medicinal cannabis is a very sensible objective to take forward.

"Why should people who are ill not have access to medicine which helps them when other medicine doesn't? And more to the point they are made criminals when they access the cannabis themselves.

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Those who used marijuana daily before age 17 were less likely to finish school and more likely to abuse other drugs.

LONDON - Teenagers who use marijuana daily run a higher risk of becoming drug-dependent, committing suicide or trying other drugs, and they are less likely to succeed at their studies than those who avoid it, researchers said yesterday.

The scientists analyzed studies on marijuana to determine its long-term health and life effects.

"Our findings are particularly timely, given that several U.S. states and countries in Latin America have made moves to decriminalize or legalize cannabis, raising the possibility the drug might become more accessible to young people," said Richard Mattick, a professor at Australia's National Drug and Alcohol Research Center at the University of New South Wales, who co-led the study.

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Daily Smokers Found to Be Less Likely to Finish High School

Teenagers who smoke marijuana daily are more than 60 percent less likely to complete high school than those who never use. They're also 60 percent less likely to graduate from college and seven times as likely to attempt suicide, says a new study of adolescent cannabis use Tuesday in the Lancet Psychiatry, a British journal of health research.

Researchers gathered data on the frequency of cannabis use among 3,725 students from Australia and New Zealand and looked at the students' developmental outcomes up to the age of 30. They found "clear and consistent associations between frequency of cannabis use during adolescence and most young adult outcomes investigated, even after controlling for 53 potential confounding factors including age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and mental illness."

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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'.

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Our Inflexible Laws Are Denying MS Patients Access to a Drug That Could Change Their Lives

The letters columns of The Daily Telegraph do not immediately spring to mind as a rallying point for the liberalisation of this country's drugs laws. But two correspondents yesterday drew attention to what must be the most irrational and unjust restriction of all: the ban on the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Just as there is plenty of evidence that cannabis is harmful (as, indeed, are tobacco and alcohol) it also has palliative qualities. People suffering from multiple sclerosis, for instance, find that cannabis, or substances based on the drug, help relieve symptoms. Jacquie Langham, an MS sufferer from Holt in Norfolk, wrote about how she had been forced to buy Sativex, a legal cannabinoid that is administered in spray form, from the internet because two GPs would not prescribe it for her.

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It's Confusing and Unfair to Deny Sativex Spray to Those Plagued by Muscle Spasms

I've read with utter frustration news reports over the past week about plans to make Sativex - an oral cannabis-based spray - available on the NHS in Wales but not in other parts of Britain. Cannabis grown for medical use on a farm at a secret location south east of London

Sativex is licensed for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) to alleviate muscle spasms and stiffness, and I'm one of a few thousand people in England who could significantly benefit from taking it; I have secondary progressive MS, experience excruciating muscle spasms and cannot tolerate any other muscle relaxant treatments.

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Deaths linked to legal highs could surpass those related to heroin use within just two years, a new report by a think-tank will say. A think-tank says there could soon be more deaths from legal highs than from heroin use

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) is to release a report this week calling for more to be done to combat the drugs, known as New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), while also calling for a "treatment tax" on alcohol.

Legal highs w ere linked to 97 deaths in 2012 and h ospital admissions rose by 56% between 2009-12, according to new CSJ data. The think-tank estimates that on current trends deaths related to legal highs could be higher than heroin by 2016 - at around 400 deaths a year.

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THE grieving mum of a Wearside man who died of a drug overdose today called for more help to stop young people following the same tragic path.

Cath Wareing's son David Pace, 26, died in April this year following a heroin overdose.

He had intermittently took Valium, cocaine and crack cocaine.

Although his family insist David, who was dad to Josie, three, wasn't an addict, they 
believe he and many other people in the situation he 
found himself in need support quicker to stop their lives being wasted.

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Police netted six suspected drug dealers - including a 13-year-old boy - - in a series of early morning raids.

A seventh person, a 31-year-old woman, was also arrested for possession of heroin as teams of officers forced their way into homes around Preston in a co-ordinated swoop codenamed Operation Arrow.

The raids were carried out in St Paul's Road in Deepdale, Villers Street in Plungington, and Fishwick Parade as part of a major attempt to smash organised gangs which are blighting neighbourhoods.

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