Theresa May, the Home Secretary, issued a humiliating rebuke to her drug advisers after they called for the possession of drugs to be decriminalised.

The Home Office said there was no intention to give people a “green light” to use drugs because they “destroy lives and cause untold misery”.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) risked a fresh row with the Home Office after suggesting those who possess any drug, including cocaine or heroin, for personal use should be taken out of the criminal justice system.

The Government issued a blunt statement insisting drug laws would not be liberalised and “decriminalisation is not the answer”. It is the latest in a series of run-ins between Whitehall’s official drug advisory body and the Home Office.

In 2009, the then Home Secretary Alan Johnson, sacked the ACMD chairman Professor David Nutt after he openly criticised the Government’s stance on cannabis. He had also previously said taking Ecstasy was no more dangerous than riding a horse.

The ACMD called for a review on how those caught in possession of drugs are handled in a submission to the Sentencing Council, which is consulting on guidelines for courts on drug offences.

However, it is not in the remit of the Sentencing Council to consider what would effectively decriminalisation and the ACMD only included its comments in the final section asking for any further comments. It wrote: “There is an opportunity to be more creative in dealing with those who have committed an offence by possession of drugs.

“For people found to be in possession of drugs (any) for personal use (and involved in no other criminal offences), they should not be processed through the criminal justice system but instead be diverted into drug education/awareness courses.”

The courses “would be the equivalent of the apparently successful ‘speed awareness’ courses to which drivers can be referred as a diversion”, the council added. It also suggested that those accused of possessing drugs could also face “more creative civil punishments”, such as the loss of a driving licence or passport.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: “We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery to families and communities. “Those caught in the cycle of dependency must be supported to live drug free lives, but giving people a green light to possess drugs through decriminalisation is clearly not the answer.”

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk 18th Oct 2011

The California Medical Association (CMA) took a major leap lacking science and common sense. With the issuance of a White Paper calling for the legalization of marijuana for medical and non-medial purposes, they have transitioned from a medical group into a lapdog of the drug legalization lobby.
“I am thoroughly appalled by the CMA’s decision to release this policy in an attempt to legalize a drug that we know causes so much harm to individuals and families,” said Eric Voth, M.D., F.A.C.P. and Chair of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. “The CMA has managed to single-handedly make a mockery of modern medicine and the ethical practices of physicians. There is nothing scientific about this White Paper – it is total politics.”

The White Paper just released contains a number of incorrect statements. Contrary to what the paper states:
• According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, the rate of current, past 30-day use of marijuana by Americans aged 12 and older in 1979 was 13.2%. In 2008 that figure stood at 6.1%. This 54% reduction over that 29-year period is a major public health triumph, not a failure! Now, we must not only push back against the drugs but, the advocates who seek to normalize and legalize them.
• The Netherlands reclassified high potency marijuana as a “hard drug” because of the harms that have occurred from the drug and moved to shut down hundreds of “coffee shops” that serve marijuana. Their lenient policy caught up with them and they are moving back to more conservative actions.
• Portugal’s policy that decriminalized consumption and possession of illicit drugs in 2001 was a dismal failure. The 2007 national drug survey showed an increase in life-time prevalence of drug use in the general population, especially regarding cannabis use and use of cocaine has nearly doubled. Cocaine seizures increased seven-fold between 2001and 2006 and murders increased 40%.

“The CMA is dead wrong in asserting that the marijuana legalization movement is driven by the public. Instead it is driven by a group of well-financed legalization advocates. The ballot initiative to legalize pot was defeated in California and no other state has approved such an ill-advised policy, despite millions of dollars poured into this effort by ivory-tower elitists unaffected by the impact of drug use, like the rest of us. Even the issue of marijuana as medicine was rejected by two-thirds of the country,” stated Calvina Fay, Executive Director of Drug Free America Foundation.

“It is laudable that CMA supports more research and more education efforts to reduce marijuana use among children, adolescents, and young adults (although we believe it should include all adults). Ongoing research into potential medicines and cures is an important endeavor but, the solution should be to require marijuana to meet the standards of modern medicine, not by ballot initiatives or legislation and certainly not by legalizing it for recreational use” Fay concluded.
Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. is dedicated to fighting drug use, drug addiction and drug trafficking and to promoting effective sound drug policies, education and prevention.

Source: www.dfaf.org October 17, 2011

BRIAN DONNELLY

THE controversial heroin substitute methadone was implicated in more deaths than the drug itself in two areas of Scotland last year.
The figures for the Lothians show methadone was implicated in 33 deaths, while the comparable figure for heroin was 26. In Grampian, another historical centre of drug abuse, the substitute was a factor in 19 deaths, set against 14 for heroin.
The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF), the national non- government drugs policy and information agency, said the prevalence of the substitute was “concerning”, while Tory health spokesman Murdo Fraser MSP said the figures showed there was a clear breakdown in the support system.

Source: www.Herald Scotland.com 17th Aug. 2011

Smoking is an important risk factor in brain shrinkage and a decline in brain function in later years, a new study suggests. The study found smoking, along with high blood pressure, diabetes and excess weight, all contributed to potentially dangerous changes in the brain that could lead to a decline in mental functioning as soon as 10 years later. The study appears in the journal Neurology.
HealthDay reports the study included 1,352 people without dementia whose average age was 54. Each person was weighed, measured, given blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes tests and underwent brain MRI scans over 10 years. The researchers found smokers lost brain volume overall and in the hippocampus—the part of the brain which converts short-term memory into long-term memory—at a faster rate than nonsmokers. They were also more likely to have a rapid increase in small areas of damage to the brain’s blood vessels.
Study author Charles DeCarli, M.D., of the University of California at Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center, said in a journal news release, “Our findings provide evidence that identifying these risk factors early in people of middle age could be useful in screening people for at-risk dementia and encouraging people to make changes to their lifestyle before it’s too late.”

Source: ThePartnership @drugfree.org. Aug.2011

Celebrities and millionaires with no history of addiction research or helping addicts to reclaim destroyed lives campaigned globally in June to make drugs even more available – citing reasons based on theory not fact. David Raynes tells the truth

COMPARE STATISTICS: HARMS OF LEGAL vs ILLEGAL DRUGS

• “More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from HIV, illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined,” states the US Centre for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_ statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_
mortality). UK figures are below.

• 880 deaths/year involve heroin or morphine
(latest figures from the Office of National Statistics at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/poi0311.pdf)

• 8,664 deaths/year involve alcohol (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1091

• 81,400 deaths of people in England alone aged 35+ were attributable to tobacco (http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/smoking10)

• An estimated 462,900 hospital admissions in England alone of people aged 35+ were attributable to smoking (ibid).

Source: Addiction Today July/August 2011

A new study by a team of researchers in California shows it is possible to vaccinate laboratory animals against the effects of heroin. The vaccine not only blunted the painkilling action of heroin, it also prevented rats from becoming addicted to the drug. It didn’t keep the animals from gaining pain relief from many other opiates, suggesting the vaccine targets just heroin and a few related compounds. The experiments at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, reported in the current edition of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, are the latest effort to bring the power of the immune system to bear against addictive substances. The next task is to see whether the vaccine prevents relapse in previously addicted and then detoxified rats.

Source: Reported in St.Petersburg Times July 28th 2011