{"id":10739,"date":"2015-03-15T15:57:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T15:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=10739"},"modified":"2016-09-21T10:47:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T10:47:18","slug":"legalisation-of-drugs-in-the-uk-political-arena-or-in-the-uk-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2015\/03\/legalisation-of-drugs-in-the-uk-political-arena-or-in-the-uk-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Legalisation of drugs in the UK political arena or in the UK politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

To go or not to go? That is the question when invited to take part in supposedly objective drugs conferences and television investigations, behind which \u00a0looms the constant presence of one Sir Richard Branson.<\/span> Two seemingly flattering invitations\u00a0to drugs policy events came my way\u00a0this month.<\/p>\n

The first was to be invited to a Home Affairs Select Committee event at the University of Cambridge\u2019s Homerton College on March 12th. \u00a0At first sight,\u00a0it felt a welcome recognition of my longstanding work in the field of drug addiction, and of my new recovery solutions service\u00a0(DB Recovery Resources<\/a>). Moreover, it seemed like an opportunity to guide and inform public opinion \u2013 even as far as the United Nations. But I was torn for days on whether to accept or not. Finally,\u00a0I regretfully declined.<\/p>\n

Why? The Home Affairs Select Committee\u2019s invitation was entitled \u201cThe International Conference on Drugs Policy\u201d and its findings at the end of the day were to be fed into the influential UNGASS, the United Nations General Assembly\u2019s Special Session on world drug problems in 2016. Tempting. But a closer look raised concerns. What exactly was a Parliamentary select committee doing\u00a0hosting a drugs policy conference? Why had\u00a0they\u00a0chosen deputy prime minister Nick Clegg who,\u00a0at the time of my invitation,\u00a0was scheduled to chair it?\u00a0He is a recognised proponent of drugs legalisation, going so far as to include it in his election\u00a0pledge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So I was aware of the agenda and bias of the conference before I was invited. \u00a0The list of speakers spoke for itself.\u00a0Every single speaker bar one \u00a0– Sarah Graham, an addiction therapist\u00a0–\u00a0turned out to be \u00a0a high-profile legalisation\u00a0campaigner<\/a>,\u00a0several from\u00a0organisations funded by the convicted insider\u00a0trader<\/a>\u00a0and fomenter \u00a0George Soros<\/a>. Only after I had publicised the biased agenda on my daily newsletter did HASC kindly invited me to attend. They also at the same time added a second ‘non-legalisation’ speaker to their invite list: Professor Neil McKeganey. But I could see it was still skewed.\u00a0We would be the minority underdog against high-profile\u00a0and well-funded legalisation campaigners, like Dr Julian Huppert MP, Baroness Molly Meacher, Roberto Dondisch from Mexico, Danny Kushlick of Transform, Professor David Nutt, who famously said taking ecstasy was less risky than horse riding, former policeman and cannabis activist Tom Lloyd, and last but not least Mike\u00a0Trace, who was forced\u00a0to resign his UN role when the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/i>\u00a0revealed him to be\u00a0the driving force behind an effort to disband the world’s anti-drug laws by\u00a0stealth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What chance would I\u00a0have to support my colleagues? Would this be like National Treatment Agency meetings I had\u00a0attended too many\u00a0times in the past (before it was abolished) \u00a0where vested-interest findings and recommendations were written before the meeting and then presented as an impartial consensus of all those present – and absent?<\/p>\n

Would it be like the self-styled United Kingdom Drug Policy Commission meetings (before it closed) which exploited the names of attendees as supporting its predetermined \u2018consensus agreement\u2019, when in reality there was a dearth of support? Was I confident that any anti-legalisation points would be included in the final report to UNGASS? That I sadly declined the invitation gives you the answer.<\/p>\n

No. The worry is now that UNGASS may\u00a0believe this Home Affairs Select Committee report, that\u00a0UK taxpayers are unwittingly funding,\u00a0to be impartial.\u00a0\u00a0Better to blog,\u00a0I thought,\u00a0and hopefully open their eyes to the truth.<\/p>\n

The second \u2018flattering\u2019 \u00a0invitation was to appear on Channel 4\u2019s\u00a0Cannabis Live<\/i>\u00a0programme on 3 March. Although warned in advance about its inherent bias \u2013 it was funded by both C4 and Soros-supported organisations, and known legalisation proponents were booked as its speakers \u2013 I decided to accept in the hope I would be able to capture some airtime for\u00a0anti-legalisation\u00a0views.<\/p>\n

(Declaration: my view is informed by the basic laws of supply and demand: increased availability leads to increased consumption. In addition there is, to my very real knowledge, so much disinformation about pot in the public domain that few people can make an informed choice). It was the right decision; although it was questionable whether there was a need for a programme experimenting \u2018live’ with substances that are already known to have significant and very negative side effects. It was also worrying that Professor Nutt\u00a0was\u00a0\u00a0an\u00a0\u201cindependent\u201d\u00a0scientific expert on it, given his obsession with cannabis legalisation and his well known insistence\u00a0that\u00a0it is less harmful than alcohol.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0plus turned out to be Jon Snow\u2019s and Andrew Marr\u2019s very negative experiences when skunk was tested on them. Perhaps that’s why presenter Snow carefully inched my neighbour off his seat to interview me, allowing time for me to make some pivotal points. \u00a0These were\u00a0particularly in response to Branson\u2019s call for regulation [legalisation] of cannabis as a solution to the world\u2019s drug problems. I pointed out \u00a0that tobacco is regulated yet kills\u00a0 more people than any other drug in the world; \u00a0 that alcohol, benzos and methadone are all regulated but follow tobacco in killing more people each than illicit drugs.<\/p>\n

I also pointed out that the first paper linking cannabis and psychosis was published 170 years ago – \u00a0in 1845 \u00a0– so this is not new. All my points were transmitted unedited. A number of \u2018silent’ audience members in Narcotics Anonymous introduced themselves and thanked me as we were leaving the studio. \u00a0It reminded \u00a0me of \u00a0US drug czar Michael Botticelli\u2019s recent comment:\u00a0\u201cI\u00a0do wish the recovery community was much more involved in anti-legalisation\u00a0<\/i>efforts<\/i><\/a>\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n

However the trouble with\u00a0Cannabis Live<\/i>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0posing as science when it was exhibitionist entertainment, as one distinguished former Professor of pharmacology commented to me afterwards\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 is that\u00a0it\u00a0provided a launchpad for the differences between \u201cbeneficent\u201d hash and \u201cnightmarish\u201d skunk to be exploited by the legalisation lobbyists. Their hidden agenda. It was worrying that the programme ignored the harms from hash (as opposed to skunk): \u00a0yet\u00a0these\u00a0include the risk of psychosis, behavioural changes, lack of motivation, lowering of IQ, lung cancer, mouth cancer, motor crashes, lowering of fertility (a mixed blessing) \u2013\u00a0and\u00a0the fact that pregnant women using hash can give birth to addicted babies with a range of mental-health problems\u00a0and medical problems,\u00a0including leukaemia.<\/p>\n

At\u00a0a press conference the next day,\u00a0billionaire legalisation campaigner Branson\u00a0was\u00a0still calling for regulation (legalisation of cannabis) as a solution despite all the downsides he\u2019d witnessed\u00a0at\u00a0Cannabis Live<\/i>. Of course he did not mention that tobacco is regulated and it kills more people than any other drug in the world, for the simple reason that it is the most widely used drug in the world.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0his cloud cuckoo land,\u00a0the 80 per cent of cannabis users who use skunk would downgrade to the milder version if they were both legal. I don\u2019t\u00a0think so.\u00a0It\u2019s against human nature. Finally,\u00a0it was left to David Nutt to round up the programme \u2013 with his extraordinary recommendation that skunk should remain low in the index of drug harms, in cannabis\u2019s current place, while hash should plummet to the lowest ranking.\u00a0Maybe he was too close to the skunk factory set up beside his artificial brain in the studio. Had anyone in the audience changed their mind about being pro- or anti-legalisation, asked Snow at the end of the programme? Not one hand went up. I leave you to decide whether this infotainment\u00a0fulfilled Channel 4\u2019s mission to \u201ckeep public service values to the fore\u201d.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0\u00a0 www.the Conservative Woman.co.uk\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 7th<\/sup> March 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To go or not to go? That is the question when invited to take part in supposedly objective drugs conferences and television investigations, behind which \u00a0looms the constant presence of one Sir Richard Branson. Two seemingly flattering invitations\u00a0to drugs policy events came my way\u00a0this month. The first was to be invited to a Home Affairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,68,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-specifics","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-effects-of-drugs","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}