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SUMMARY:After a century of failure\, time now to put science at the heart 
 of drug and alcohol policy - Professor David Nutt
DTSTART:20140312T210000Z
DTEND:20140312T220000Z
UID:TALK49956@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Graham Edgecombe
DESCRIPTION:The use of the law to control drug use is long established tho
 ugh still unproven in efficacy. Although seemingly obvious that legal inte
 rdictions should work there is little evidence to support this assertion. 
 So for example cannabis though illegal is at some time used by nearly half
  of the population. Similarly drugs like ecstasy and amfetamine are widely
  used by up to a million young people each weekend. This use is underpinne
 d by a demand for the pleasurable experiences that the drugs produce\, and
  also by a paradoxical desire by some people to break the law.\n \nAs well
  as being ineffective for many users prohibition of drugs often leads to p
 erverse magnification of harms and drug use. When the “English” approa
 ch to heroin use i.e. prescription to addicts was abolished in the 1970s o
 n moral grounds heroin use increased tenfold in a few years as addicts wer
 e forced to become dealers so getting more people addicted to fuel their i
 ncome.  The banning of alcohol in the 1920s in the USA lead to huge crimin
 al expansion of alcohol sales the perpetrators of which turned to other dr
 ugs once prohibition was repealed: a legacy that we still experience today
 .\n \nMoreover the un-scientific and arbitrary distinct between legal drug
 s particularly alcohol and tobacco and “illegal” drugs also has perver
 se negative consequences. As well as bringing the scientific foundation of
  the drug laws into disrepute it also precludes the use of possibly life-c
 hanging drugs for those who might benefit from them as treatments: example
 s of these include cannabis for Multiple sclerosis\, MDMA [ecstasy] for PT
 SD and psilocybin for cluster headaches. \n \nFor these reasons I will arg
 ue that there are serious ethical implications for a simplistic prohibitio
 nist approach to drugs and suggest alternative strategies that might be us
 ed.
LOCATION:Nihon Room\, Pembroke College
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