http://ukcia.org/wordpress news and comment from www.ukcia.org Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:56:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Drug law reform seems to be on the agenda in a way it has never been before following the sacking of David Nutt and it's clear the prohibition camp is rattled. Into this debate the Transform campaign has launched it's latest publication "After the war on drugs - A blueprint for ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=95 The reason Prof Nutt was sacked last week was made pretty clear by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary; we can't have people questioning the workings of the drug laws by spreading knowledge of the truth. He knows that as soon as the debate about drugs is opened up, the whole ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=94 UK drugs policy is in chaos and it's all the fault of politicians playing to the media instead of making policy based on fact.  To paraphrase Douglas Adams of "The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy" fame: The skills needed to get elected mean that anyone who has the ability ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=93 Now lets be quite clear: Cannabis isn't a controlled drug because it's illegal, I'm sure this blog has mentioned that before once or twice. The problem with cannabis in the real world is that fact that although illegal, millions of people use it and a massive unrestrained, unregulated uncontrolled illegal ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=92 Just how many people would you need to prevent getting stoned to have any hope of reducing the rates of mental illness if the theory of a causal role for cannabis were true? The answer, it seems, is rather a lot. A strange bit of research was published this week by ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=91 Two stories over the past few days reported as "news" which actually serve to underline how the prohibition of recreational drug use hides what's really going on out there in the real world. Before we consider these two reports, it's perhaps a good idea to remind ourselves that illegal drugs are ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=90 A study with the snappy title of "Maternal tobacco, cannabis and alcohol use during pregnancy and risk of adolescent psychotic symptoms in offspring" was published recently  in BJpsych (abstract) (full text)  by researchers at Cardiff, Bristol, Warwick and Nottingham universities which threw another spanner in the claims that cannabis causes ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=89 Nobody listens to people who "cry wolf" or who are hypocrites. Nothing could be nearer the truth when it comes to the government's anti cannabis campaign aimed at young people. The problem we have is real; we have ever younger kids getting hold of and smoking  cannabis and despite of all ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=88 Despite all the headline grabbing research that's been carried out to look for cancer causing properties of cannabis, there doesn't seem to have been any research done to look at the effects of mixing cannabis and tobacco, as is common practice here in the UK. As this blog has mentioned ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=87 As this blog reported last week, there's been a flurry of drug law reform articles in the media, prohibition supporters have been having their say and it's worth looking at their arguments. Last Sunday in the Observer saw a comment from the head of the UN Office of Drug Control Antonio ... http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=86