Cowardice A blast of truth from a former civil servant exposes the endemic hypocrisy of Governments' drugs policy.Many ministers and civil servants hold drugs prohibition in contempt but meekly implement laws that have increased drugs harm including deaths. Julian Critchley...

Mark Mardell over at the BBC has a closer look at Transform's cost-benefit analysis of legalising/regulating drugs and the Home Office's turgid response: Today's Home Office statement offers another reason for not considering the legalisation/regulation model: "The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simpl...

THE UK government's chief drugs adviser was forced to quit yesterday in the wake of a row over the dangers of class A drugs.

Almost all is sensible except: His report does raise one good argument, however. At present the trade in class A drugs is concentrated in the rich nations. If it were legalised, we could cope. The use of drugs is likely to rise, but governments could use the extra taxes to help people tackle addiction. But because

Remove dogma, spin, PR and inertia, and the truth might get a chance. We now see the ex drugs policy director for the government coming out in favour of legalising drugs. I have blogged about this before a number of times. An end to the massive drain on our resources, misdirected law enforcement, unnecessary imprisonments and invasions of privacy (money laundering legislation is mostly to hunt for...

How many people cannot get the drugs they believe they need on the NHS?About 15,000 patients ask their primary care trust to pay for extra drugs every year, but many more probably do not even try. Why can't the NHS pay for these drugs?These are generally new drugs, which come on the market at very high prices. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which decides whi...

Commenting on today’s NHS statistics which show that 25% of children aged 11-15 have tried drugs at least once, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said: "While the fall in children experimenting with drugs is welcome, the percentage of children trying drugs is still shockingly high. "The Government must ensure that public health messages on the dangers of drugs and alcohol...

I see there's a new campaign going about to decriminalise and destigmatize drugs. One in three adults in the UK have taken them, as have the last three US presidents, so it's time to remove the stigma around drugs, and talk openly towards more effective, safer policy. OK, I'm in the minority that has never experimented with recreational chemicals and my Puritan upbringing (really!) means that I do...

The etiquette of Lebanese drug busts: “Drugs are fine, cars are fine but the police have been told that if they enter a house looking for drugs and find 50 machine guns or RPGs, they had better pretend like they...

United Nations member states are set to paper over their differences today and sign up to 10 more years of the much-criticised "war on drugs" at a drugs summit in Vienna. A draft policy declaration tabled at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs last night did not mention the innovation that campaigners had hoped for: "harm reduction" strategies such as needle exchange programmes to prevent the spre...