The War on Drugs has failed. According to all available indices, it is no longer defendable. Vast expenditure on drug law enforcement has resulted in increasing levels of overall drug-use and lowered drug prices. 2011 is the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Convention, which lies at the root of the criminalizing approach to drug control. Now is the perfect time to re-evaluate our approach.

Of all regions in the world, Latin America has perhaps been the most affected by the unintended consequences of global prohibition. Huge criminal markets have at times turned countries such as Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico into nigh-on war zones. Drug enforcement and eradication in one Andean country has displaced production into neighboring countries and back in turn, in an ongoing cycle. The criminalization of drug control has seen the numbers of those incarcerated for drug offenses (even the possession of minor amounts for personal consumption) rise to levels that overwhelm judicial systems. Currently there are over 10 million people in prison worldwide.

However, Latin America, as the region that has suffered the most, is now leading the way to an open and frank discussion of drugs. Recent declarations from certain politicians show a much greater understanding of the problems than those coming from some of their Western counterparts. In Peru, former President and current presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo declared himself open to full decriminalization. Whilst he nuanced his argument a few days later, the declaration itself shows that Latin American governments are becoming increasingly progressive in their nature. The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, led by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, has declared its outright opposition to a “misguided and counter-productive war.”

The most significant declaration of all, however, may well be that of current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Santos is head of a country traditionally felt to be one of the US’ major allies in the War on Drugs. However, President Santos has declared himself open to a discussion on alternative approaches that may reduce both the risks and harms associated with illegal drugs. A recipient of major US aid, Colombia cannot turn away directly from Plan Colombia, but Santos’ comments show that Colombian drug policy may be slowly turning against the whirlpool of US foreign policy.

A fellow Andean country, Bolivia, has recently seen more and more countries support its proposals to reform the international prohibition of chewing the coca leaf. Flexibility and cultural sensitivity are vital within approaches to drug conventions. Drug control regimes should be respectful of human rights and take account of different cultural norms in societies around the world. There must be the freedom for individual countries to work out what is best for them. The one-fit-all model has shown itself to be highly destructive.

Various countries such as Portugal have shown how successful a change in policy can be. They have demonstrated that the decriminalization of use and a commitment to provide health and rehabilitation programs as alternatives to incarceration, together with a sustained educational program, can diminish the harms associated with drug-use. Both Hungary and the Czech Republic criminalized use in 1999. However, studies showed that this policy had been a disaster and brought more social costs than benefits. Consequently, both countries reversed this policy (in 2003 and 2010 respectively). We cannot let such lessons go unheeded. We must learn from these examples.

It is time for a new approach. The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, with its zero-tolerance approach, was written in a very different context to today, both socially and politically. A rewriting of the UN Convention would enable us to move forward from the present impasse. Individual countries should have more freedom to be able to decriminalize the personal use of drugs and, should the country so wish, to legally regulate certain substances, such as cannabis, thereby being able to control and label their content, and tax them. This would have the advantage of saving vast sums on the continuation of the coercive approach, as well as raising substantial tax to implement an educational and treatment approach to drug-use. It would also solve the problem of hundreds of billions of dollars going into the hands of criminals each year.

The Beckley Foundation Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform 2011-2012 is proposing such a model.

2011 is the 50th anniversary of the 1961 UN Convention, the 40th anniversary of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act and the 10th anniversary of the Portuguese drug decriminalisation. There has never been a more appropriate time for change.

Tan Le is the head of Emotiv Systems, which is developing the next generation of human-machine interface — a headset that takes input directly from the brain.

I set up the Beckley Foundation in 1998 for the purpose of scientifically studying consciousness and its altered states.

Growing up in an isolated but magical garden on the edge of a marsh in England, I enjoyed several childhood mystical experiences, from which I developed a passionate interest in mysticism, the Sufis and Bhuddism. After my first psychedelic experience with LSD in 1965, I became fascinated by the scientific question: what physiological processes underlie the alteration of consciousness brought about by this miraculous substance? In particular, my explorations led me to wonder whether one of LSD’s principal actions was to increase the blood supply to the brain capillaries, thereby providing extra glucose and oxygen to the brain cells, accelerating brain metabolism, which may in turn be the cause of those experiences that are shared by both psychedelic and mystical states of consciousness.

There is after all, nothing more important to human beings than our consciousness – it is the core of our being, through which all awareness passes. To enhance its function must be to our gain!
The better understanding of what consciousness is, how it works, and what are the changing factors that underlie its full range of states, is centrally important not only to the individual but also to society.
It was to delve into these questions that I set up the Beckley Foundation, realizing that, as a Foundation, I could be much more effective than as a mere person. I invited a distinguished galaxy of scientists, stretching all the way from Albert Hofmann to Sacha Shulgin, to be on the advisory board, giving the Foundation added depth and opening the doors to the world of academia.

From my own experiences with psychedelics, I realized how amazingly and significantly they can
raise ones capacity to perceive and to perform, if used with skill, and in a “responsible” way. With a scientific explanation of how they alter consciousness, one can much more easily use them as valuable tools to expand and explore consciousness.

Between the prohibition of psychedelics in 1970 and the setting up of the Beckley Foundation in 1998, the new technology of brain-imaging had made unbelievable advances. Combined with the catalyst of a psychedelic to alter consciousness, this new technology could now be used to reveal the inner workings of the brain and the mind, at levels not imaginable before – provided, that is, that the state could be persuaded to grant ethical approvals for such research. It is an orchard full of ripe fruit waiting to be picked.

From a combination of my own experiences and many years of studying the science of consciousness, I developed a good idea of what the important questions are that research into the physiology underlying consciousness needs to address and how to set about exploring this subject using psychedelics.

Through the Beckley Foundation I am currently collaborating in over 10 different projects involving psychedelics – particularly LSD, psilocybin and cannabis – at such institutions as, Imperial College London, the Institute of Psychiatry, University College London, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Hannover and St. Petersburg.

I would like to give you a very brief overview of a selection of these projects which I hope will be of interest to you:

After years of seeking to open up psychedelic research in the UK, I have at last, with Prof. “Dave” Nutt and Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College, started investigating the effects of psilocybin on blood flow and brain activity, using the fMRI techniques of ASL and BOLD. This pioneering study will throw light on the question of if, and how, psilocybin helps in the recall of distant or repressed memories, helping to develop it as an aid in psychotherapy, and also throwing new light on the important and neglected subject of cerebral circulation. We plan that this first Beckley/Imperial study will grow into an ongoing programme of psychedelic research. Robin will be talking about the study in more detail tomorrow.

At Johns Hopkins, I am delighted to be collaborating with Prof. Roland Griffiths and Matt Johnson, in conducting the first study in modern times to harness the profound psychological effects of psilocybin to aid in the treatment of that most intractable addiction, to nicotine in cigarette smoking. Previous research has suggested that the mystical, spiritual experiences that psilocybin can promote might be integral to the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted treatments of addiction. This project has great potential to develop our understanding of psychedelics, their impact on health and well-being, and their therapeutic potential.

In 2005, I suggested to Matt Baggott that we collaborate on an LSD study in California. In April 2007 we received the first full approvals, since prohibition ended all such research over 30 years ago, to use LSD with human participants at Berkeley. This first pilot study, investigates the safety of using LSD in scientific research and, using EEG, explores how changes in consciousness brought about by LSD alter the way in which brain areas communicate with each other, and how LSD may enhance creativity. Most importantly, by obtaining the first approvals it becomes easier for future research to gain such approvals, thereby open up this most important field of research.

In another Beckley Foundation study located in Europe, we are currently applying for approvals to study the effect of LSD on cerebral circulation and brain activity, This study will compliment both the research at Berkeley, and the psilocybin research at Imperial.

Also, working with Profs. Torsten Passie and Matthias Karst at the Hannover Medical School, we are, among other studies, furthering the investigation of the treatment of cluster headaches using a non-psycho-active analogue of LSD, called Bromo-LSD. This study will, we hope, develop our understanding of the underlying causes of cluster headaches, and also refine a treatment-plan, using Bromo-LSD, that would either cure, or reduce the pain and duration of each attack.

We were delighted to be able to make an early contribution to Peter Gasser for the MAPS-sponsored pilot study in Switzerland, which administers LSD, as part of a palliative treatment programme to ease the pain and pre-death anxiety in subjects suffering from terminal illness.

In the field of cannabis research, the Beckley has initiated and is collaborating on a network of projects, including the first investigation, with Prof. Dave Nutt, into what neurophysiological changes underlie the ‘high’ that people experience as beneficial when smoking cannabis. In this pioneering study, the participants are inhaling vapor from the natural plant. We are making use of fMRI to investigate changes in blood flow, and other brain-imaging techniques to investigate the changes in neuro-transmitters and brain activity. Together, these alterations will be correlated with the changes in subjective perception, thereby increasing our understanding of how cannabis alters consciousness

In other research with the Institute of Psychiatry, we are investigating the different effects of THC as opposed to canabidiol or CBD, and the evidence is ever more convincing that CBD might well prove to be a most valuable medication in the treatment of psychosis, stress and a variety of other disorders. In natural cannabis, the ratio of these two compounds is balanced, but in more recent genetically-engineered strains of cannabis the THC ratio becomes ever higher, and the CBD correspondingly lower. A study we have just completed has shown that pure intravenous THC can produce psychotic-like symptoms even in healthy individuals, but that if the subjects are first given CBD, they are much less likely to have those symptoms.

In collaboration with Professor Val Curran and Celia Morgan at University College London, we are investigating four hundred participants smoking their own cannabis; we are taking measures of the ratio of THC to CBD in their cannabis and also collecting data of the participant’s genetic and personality type. With this information we are investigating the propensity of cannabis to stimulate creativity, and also exploring the individual differences which leads to cannabis causing anxiety in some people and pleasure in others. The next stage of this research will use brain imaging technology to investigate the effects of cannabis on creativity.
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Another project which is particularly close to my heart, and is a central piece in the jigsaw of understanding the importance of cerebral circulation in regards to cognitive functioning is my work with Professor Yuri Moskalenko at the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology in St Petersburg. Together we are investigating the cerebral-circulatory-systems of blood and cerebrospinal fluid, their changing dynamics, and their effects on cognition and the long-term health of the brain. This research, which has already produced many peer-reviewed papers, is casting important new light on many aspects of the ageing process and dementia, and hints at how changes in blood circulation may provide a unifying thread behind many aspects of consciousness.
The research has also developed a new non-invasive technique to investigate the changes in cerebral dynamics, and further developed the concept of cranial compliance.

It is my hope that as the network of Beckley Foundation studies, progress and produce results, slowly a clearer overview will emerge of how the changing states of consciousness can be understood in terms of changes of blood supply, of chemical and electrical activity and the interaction between different areas of the brain.

To Summarize:
Psychoactive substances have been used since the dawn of human culture as a means of altering consciousness, and to my mind will always be around, as humans have an innate drive to alter their consciousness. That is why a principal aim of the Beckley Foundation is to open the doors to scientific research into these substances, in order to expand our knowledge of how, at a clinical level, their use can help in the treatment of illness and suffering, and at the neuroscientific level, how they can be used as invaluable tools for unlocking the mysteries of consciousness itself.

Of course, there is another aspect of the psychedelics which also merits scientific investigation, and that is to gain a better understanding of how their use can enhance the life of healthy people, by expanding their awareness, deepening their sense of the spiritual, enhancing creativity, adding laughter and vitality and, finally, helping the individual fulfil the Delphic oracle’s message to Know Thyself, which is, by the way, the motto of the Beckley Foundation.

In order for research in psychedelics to fully develop we need to make headway at the political level, of cleansing these substances of their taboos, and at a practical level, of finding the funding to carry out our research programs.

Towards this first aim I would like to briefly mention the Beckley Foundation’s wider efforts in the field of international drug policy research, which is dedicated to providing a rigorous, independent review of global drug policy, aiming at reducing the harms associated with both the misuse of drugs and the policies that aim to control them. The intention of the Foundation is to help develop policies that are evidence-based and rational, rather than those that are ineffectual and harmful, due to being rooted in unsubstantiated ideology.

In conclusion, trying to condense 12 years of Beckley work into 15 minutes is a little like catching lightning in a bottle, but I hope I may have caught a spark or two.

Now is such an exciting time for Psychedelic Research as our toe is in the door, and it is finally beginning to reap real rewards, after having been a sleeping beauty for the last 40 years.

I am very grateful for having the opportunity to meet so many like minded people and I much look forward to widening the network of collaboration over the next few days.

Amanda originally wrote this piece for the Huffington Post

Cannabis is by far the most widely used illegal drug and therefore the mainstay of the ‘War on Drugs.’ It is used by an estimated 4% of the global adult population, that is, 166 million people out of an estimated population of 200 million illegal drug users’. It therefore constitutes roughly 80% of the ‘illegal drug market.’ However, cannabis has only ever held a relatively marginal position in international drug policy discussions. In response to its peripheral role in the global debate, I decided to convene a team of the world’s leading drug policy analysts to prepare an overview of the latest scientific evidence surrounding cannabis and the policies controlling its use. The report would both bring cannabis to the attention of policy-makers and also provide them with the relevant facts to better inform their future decisions, particularly in the context of the United Nations Strategic Drug Policy Review of 2009, and thereafter.

The historical context of the United Nations’ policy is critical here. In 1998, the international community agreed a 10-year program of activity for the control of illegal drug use and markets. These agreements were made at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) held in New York in June of that year, and a commitment was made to reassess the situation at the end of the 10-year period. The nature of this program was epitomized by the slogan ‘A drug free world — we can do it!’ However, the reality is that since 1998 drugs have in general become cheaper and more readily available than ever before. We hope that this volume will help lead the way towards a more rational, effective and just approach to the control of cannabis.

Cannabis is, however, a complicated issue, with many seemingly contradictory facets. On the one hand, it has a history of spiritual and medicinal use that dates back millennia; this, together with the explosion in its use during the latter half of the twentieth century, indicates the many subjective benefits that users attribute to it. Moreover, it is one of the least toxic substances used recreationally, where the risk of overdose is negligible. On the other hand, recent years have seen growing concern about an association between cannabis use and a variety of possible harms, particularly mental health disorders. Only through extensive and rigorous research can we hope to clarify the contradictions between the perceived benefits of cannabis and the dangers it presents.

Some of the many questions on which we lack reliable evidence include: Why do people choose to use cannabis? What are the psychological and therapeutic needs it fulfils? What are the processes it might enhance? Why and when is cannabis harmful? Can this be understood in terms of differences in individual genetic and personality types, or in the type of cannabis consumed, or in the pattern of its consumption? By answering these and other questions we might minimize the harms caused by cannabis use and help to prevent its misuse, as well as better understanding the benefits many users reportedly derive from it, both in alleviating sickness and promoting well-being.

When considering harms, it is also important to include the adverse effects of a criminal justice approach to cannabis control. This is particularly pertinent given the evidence that cannabis control policies, whether draconian or liberal, appear to have little or no impact on the prevalence or intensity of its consumption. Indeed, at the onset of international cannabis prohibition, use of the drug was confined to a scattering of countries and cultures, but since then it has spread around the world and is now widely used in most developed countries, to the extent that it has become a rite of passage for a majority of young people.

In the developed world, it is all too easy to overlook the unintended consequences of the War on Drugs, including the extensive violations of human rights, since in these countries the violations are most predominantly felt by drug-users themselves, particularly where discriminatory enforcement leads to significantly higher levels of arrests among the disadvantaged and minority groups. However, in producer/transit countries, such as in Latin America, the suffering caused by this war is vastly more widespread, affecting not only farmers but also whole populations by the destabilization of political and social systems through corruption, violence, and institutional collapse. While attention to these systemic effects has primarily been focused on other drugs, the war on cannabis also plays a significant role.

However, despite cannabis being responsible for the great majority of arrests for illicit drug-use — in the US alone approximately 750,000 arrests per annum – international drug policy discussions have tended to ignore cannabis, focusing instead on those substances that cause the most harms: opioids, cocaine, and amphetamines. As discussed in this volume, although cannabis has always been marginal to the main interests of the international drug control system, the upholders of the system have been extremely reluctant to consider reforms which would change its status within, or remove it from, that system.

Although this Report is specifically targeted at reviewing cannabis laws, it is worth noting that any change to the scheduling of cannabis under the international drug control system could lead to the questioning of the whole War on Drugs approach. Without cannabis within the system’s remit, the number of illegal drug-users in the world would total somewhere in the region of 40 million people – arguably too small a number to justify the vast costs, in money, human suffering, and political corruption, of the current efforts to enforce the ideals behind this unwinnable war. With a much narrower target the War on Drugs might turn instead into a more sensible campaign to relieve the problems caused by the dependence of a small number of users on more addictive and dangerous drugs.

The present volume reviews the issues which need to be considered by policy-makers in developing more effective cannabis policies that minimize the harms associated with its use and control. We hope that this Report will prove useful in policy discussions concerning cannabis, not only in the context of the 2009 international review, but also as a guide for governments seeking to reform their cannabis policies thereafter, and that it will further promote a wider discussion of these important issues amongst the general public.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, painkillers were kept in a glass bottle in the bathroom medicine cabinet. When you had a headache, you would wait until you got home and then open the dusty bottle and shake out two pills: round, powdery discs with bevelled edges and a bisect line – a groove cut into the pill so that you could snap it in half for a reduced dose. You’d swallow the pills, either aspirin or paracetamol, with a glass of water. They felt uncomfortably large in the throat and had a bitter taste. The bottle, which contained 50 pills, hung around for months, even years.

Now, when I feel a headache coming on, I pat my pockets to see if I have any painkillers on me. The time between pain and treatment has shrunk to almost nothing. These days, the pills do not come in bottles, but in blister-packs in bright, shiny boxes. When I leave the house, I sometimes run through a checklist – keys, wallet, phone, painkillers. The packets, some of which are plastic and shaped like mobile phones, are cheerful and glossy; elegant enough to put on a table in a restaurant, they look like lifestyle accessories. You take them with you when you leave the house, partly for convenience and partly because you know that, if you leave them lying around, someone else will pocket them.

Painkillers are no longer hard to swallow; the pills have smooth edges, and some have a glossy coating of hard sugar, like Smarties or M&M’s. Some of them are mint- or lemon-flavoured. If your throat objects to tablets, you can take caplets, which are longer and thinner, or “liquid capsules”, which are soft and gelatinous, like vitamin pills, or powder, which is poured from a sachet into a glass of water. You could conceivably take a painkiller while you were out jogging, or running for the bus.

Painkillers are also more widely available than they used to be. We have been able to buy aspirin and paracetamol over the counter for some time now, but in 1996 restrictions on the sale of ibuprofen – the newest, raciest painkiller – were relaxed, making it available in supermarkets, newsagents and corner shops, as well as from the pharmacist. This was part of an NHS drive to save money by taking pressure off doctors and pharmacists; as citizens, we have been taught to be self-medicating when it comes to pain. The change came about after Galpharm, a British pharmaceutical company, made a successful application to the Medicines Control Agency for a licence to have ibuprofen moved from the pharmacy to the “general sales list”. After that, painkiller advertising, marketing and packaging moved into a different league.

Inevitably, we are also spending more on painkillers than ever. I’d buy them as a matter of course, with my groceries. I found myself wanting to buy smart painkillers, in the same way that I might buy smart jeans or decent coffee. For me, and for many people I spoke to, the temptation is to catch headaches early, nip them in the bud. We have become enthusiastic self-medicators. In 1997, according to the market research firm Euromonitor, the British painkiller market was worth £309m. In 2001, it was worth £398m. In other words, it grew by almost 30% in just four years, probably the biggest hike since the German company Bayer opened the first US aspirin factory in 1903. Euromonitor predicts more growth: by 2006, it estimates that the market will be worth £483m.

Recently, I found myself in someone’s house with a slight headache. No problem, he said. He had stocked up on painkillers – he thought he had four packets, a total of 48 pills. But he couldn’t find them; the packets had all gone. Three people were living in the house. “I just bought them a couple of days ago,” he said. That was the moment I decided to write this article.

How do you decide what type of headache you have? Is it an Anadin Extra headache, or an Anadin Ultra headache? Is it a Nurofen headache, or a Nurofen Plus headache? Can you cure it with tablets, or do you need liquid capsules?

In an ordinary shop, you can buy three basic types of painkiller – aspirin, which has been around for a century; paracetamol, which emerged as a popular alternative after the war; or ibuprofen, which was invented in the early 1960s and has been a pharmacy medicine since 1983. Ibuprofen is slightly gentler on your stomach than aspirin, but it does not thin your blood to the same extent.

Aspirin and ibuprofen reduce pain, fever and inflammation, while paracetamol reduces only pain and fever. Paracetamol is gentle on the stomach, but can damage the liver if you take too many. Paracetamol is also the suicide drug; you can die a painful death by knocking back as few as 25. (For this reason, the government has taken steps to reduce packet sizes; since 1998, you have been able to buy packets of no more than 16 in supermarkets, or 32 in pharmacies – though there is nothing to stop you from going to more than one shop. The multibillion-dollar paracetamol industry in the US has thus far resisted all attempts by the Food and Drug Administration to reduce packet size.) Aspirin and ibuprofen are potentially less harmful: most people would survive a cry-for-help dose of around 50 aspirins, or even 100 ibuprofen tablets.

When it comes to headaches, ibuprofen is my drug of choice. (I’m not alone: according to Euromonitor, ibuprofen now has 31% of the market, and is growing exponentially. Aspirin has a 7% share, and paracetamol 13%; the rest of the market is made up of combination painkillers.) I also, I have noticed, have strong brand loyalty. When I go to the supermarket, my eye is drawn to the row of shiny silver packs with a chevron and a target design – Nurofen. Nurofen claims to be “targeted pain relief”.

Targeting a headache costs me around 20p a shot. On one level, I am aware that the active ingredient in a single Nurofen tablet, 200mg of ibuprofen, is exactly the same as that in a single Anadin ibuprofen tablet, or an Anadin Ultra, a Hedex ibuprofen, a Cuprofen or, for that matter, a generic own-brand ibuprofen tablet from Safeway, Sainsbury’s or Tesco. On another level, Nurofen’s targeting promise appeals to me. It feels hi-tech, almost environmentally sound. It makes me think of stealth bombers dropping smart bombs down the chimney of the building they want to destroy, with minimum collateral damage.

Are our headaches getting worse, or do we just think they are? I went to see Dr Raj Munglani, a consultant in pain management, in his office at Nuffield hospital in Cambridge, to find out what he thought. Munglani is a pleasant-looking man in middle age who drives a top-of-the-range Volvo between his home in a village outside Cambridge and the various hospitals in East Anglia where he practises.

Munglani believes that our society tolerates less pain than ever before. Modern life requires you to be pain-free; there just isn’t time to lie around waiting for a headache to go. Young people are more impatient than older people; when they feel pain, they want something done about it, immediately. Generally speaking, the younger the consumer, the stronger the painkiller they are marketed: Anadin Original is pitched at people over 45, Anadin Extra at people between 25 and 55, and Anadin Ultra at people between 19 and 32. Of course, there is a limit to this sliding scale: Nurofen for Children (six months and over) contains 100mg of Nurofen, half the adult dose.

Is any of this surprising? We live in an age of quick fixes. These days, we expect everything to get faster – cars, lifts, food. When we suffer psychological distress, we take Prozac and Seroxat. More people are having their wisdom teeth extracted under general anaesthetic. Caesarean section is on the increase. Half a century of the NHS has softened us up, and the sheer success of modern medicine has made pain something of an anomaly. We work out, we take vitamins: we can’t really be doing with headaches. We see pain not as a symptom – an alarm system to warn us of illness – but more as an illness in itself. When the alarm comes on, we just want it turned off.

Our parents and grandparents “worked through” their pain; they gritted it out. God, it was said, would never give you a pain you couldn’t bear. In those days, pain had a moral, even a religious dimension. Pope John Paul II has said “suffering contains, as it were, an appeal to man’s moral greatness and spiritual maturity” – but today few of us want to be martyrs. Look at the ads on TV, and on buses and trains in any major city: painkillers will get you back to work, help you keep your job, deal with the kids; with painkillers, you can cope.

I had a slight hangover the day I visited Munglani, which seemed to be getting worse. I’d nearly missed my train, and found myself repeatedly clenching my jaw in the taxi. I’d planned to buy some Nurofen before I got on the train, but had run out of time.

Munglani explained the anatomy of my headache. The alcohol I had drunk had dehydrated the inside of my skull. Consequently, the dura, the Cellophane-like membrane that encases my brain, was no longer fully supported. Cells inside my skull were being traumatised, and had responded by releasing tiny amounts of arachidonic acid; this acid, having seeped out of my cells, had turned into a set of chemical compounds called prostaglandins. And these prostaglandins were hurting me; they were telling nerve endings in my head to tell my brain that my cells were traumatised. My brain, in turn, was trying to get my attention, and succeeding. I was in pain. It felt as if something inside my head was being gently pulled away from my skull, which it was.

When you take aspirin, or paracetamol, or ibuprofen, the drug works by deactivating a chemical called prostaglandin H synthetase, the catalyst that turns arachidonic acid into prostaglandins. So even though your cells are still traumatised, your brain is no longer aware of the trauma. Your brain is being fooled. This process was discovered in aspirin in the 1970s by John Vane, a scientist working at the Wellcome Foundation, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1982. (Aspirin was first synthesised in Germany in 1899, and so had been on the market for more than 70 years before anybody knew how it worked.)

“Pain,” said Munglani, “is what the patient says it is.” All sorts of things can make you feel headachey, including muscle contractions on the scalp or the back of the neck, dehydration from drinking too much alcohol or caffeine, staring at your computer screen for too long, looking at bright lights, colds and flu, grinding your teeth, anxiety at the prospect of getting a headache. Sometimes, prostaglandins are produced when there is no apparent trauma. You might feel pain because something has subtly altered the balance of your brain chemistry, or simply because your mood has changed; you might be producing an uneven amount of serotonin or dopamine.

You might, most worryingly, have a headache because you take too many painkillers, a condition known as “medication overuse headache”. A study published in the British Medical Journal last October found that “daily or near-daily headache is at epidemic levels, affecting up to 5% of some populations, and chronic overuse of headache drugs may account for half of this phenomenon”. Low doses daily appeared to carry greater risks than larger doses weekly.

Of course, most pharmaceutical research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, which are understandably reluctant to explore the negatives. But what research there is suggests that analgesics, when used frequently, chronically reduce levels of serotonin, and increase levels of pain-signalling molecules. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that a German study had found that even a two-week course of Tylenol (an American brand of paracetamol) “causes a drop in serotonin-receptor density in rat brains”, an effect that is reversed when the rats are taken off the painkillers. If you keep fooling your brain into not feeling pain, your body will eventually fight back and make you feel more pain. And then you’ll want more painkillers; it’s a vicious circle.

Imagine this as a business proposition. You buy a cardboard tub of fluffy white powder for around £100. Then you turn the powder into a quarter of a million pills, which you sell at 10p per pill. Every cardboard tub you buy makes you a profit of £24,900. The powder is pure ibuprofen. The pills are painkillers. The company is Boots, which owns a subsidiary called Crookes Healthcare, which manufactures Nurofen. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Of course, there are overheads – you have to invent the drug, spend years on expensive clinical trials, build a factory, and hire people to make the pills, tell the public about the pills, and design the packs so they look attractive on the shelves. “It takes 10 years and £200m to get a new drug accepted,” said Dr James Walmsley, a senior medical adviser to Boots. Even so, it’s clearly worth it. (I asked two Boots employees how much the company would pay for a 50kg tub of ibuprofen. “About £100,” they agreed. Later, a press officer emailed me to say she couldn’t officially comment on the cost.)

Boots’ head office, and the factory that makes many of its painkillers, are on a campus that lies a few miles outside Nottingham. Every day, trucks full of raw ingredients arrive at one end of the factory, and trucks leave the other end with the finished product – tens of thousands of cardboard packs, destined for 90 countries. This is D-95, one of the biggest painkiller factories in Britain, working 24 hours a day. If you’ve ever popped a Nurofen tablet, or a Nurofen caplet, or a Nurofen Plus, or a Nurofen liquid capsule, or a Boots own-brand generic ibuprofen tablet (the active ingredient is the same), or a Boots own-brand aspirin or paracetamol tablet, the pill you swallowed will have been made here. This is Headache Central.

“Six hundred people work here,” said Catherine McGrath, who described herself as “shift manager, analgesics”. She explained that the factory works seasonally, making cold remedies in the autumn to meet winter demand, and hayfever remedies in the spring. Headaches are a year-round phenomenon. “There’s a constant demand for painkillers,” McGrath told me.

Before the fluffy white powder becomes a hard, glossy pill, it must go through many different stages. First, it is mixed with “excipients”, ingredients that have no painkilling role. Each Nurofen pill, for instance, contains 200mg of ibuprofen, but also maize starch, sucrose, calcium sulphate, stearic acid and shellac. These things hold it together, bulk it out, make it taste nice and help it disintegrate when it reaches the stomach.

If you swallow a Nurofen tablet, Boots’ employees will have mixed it, granulated it, sieved it in a colander the size of a dining table, dried it using a contraption like a hand-drier in a public loo, but 20ft tall, blown it upwards into a series of giant “socks”, milled it in a vast grinding machine, “pinched” it to remove excess air, punched it into the shape of a pill, weighed it, checked it for metal deposits, coated it in sugar 16 times until the edges are smooth, printed it with a logo on an old-fashioned printing press, blister-packed it and boxed it in an attractive box.

The factory is large and sterile, like a setting in a JG Ballard novel – big, barn-like spaces, dull, neutral colours, large rooms full of vats. The thing that gets you is the scale. This is about making millions and millions of pills – to cure tension headaches in France, migraines in Germany, hangovers in Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden. Naturally, after a few hours in this environment, a headache started creeping up on me. I patted my pockets. Nothing. It is not possible to take a pill in the factory itself.

McGrath and I watched hundreds of ibuprofen caplets pouring down chutes. “Lovely and slinky,” she said, “nice to go down your throat.”

Stewart Adams, the inventor of ibuprofen, lives modestly in a compact modern house on the outskirts of Nottingham. On the sideboard in his living room there is a silver Nurofen pack, cast in metal, with the names of the first Nurofen advertisers on the back. He won an OBE for services to science in 1987, and his name is on the ibuprofen patent. But Adams has derived no great material reward from his invention – no house in the country, not even a lifetime supply of painkillers. When he gets a headache, he goes to the corner shop just like the rest of us.

A sprightly, talkative 79, Adams came upon ibuprofen when he was working as a research scientist for Boots in the late 1950s, looking for a drug to reduce inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Looking back on his career, he says he was “very disappointed”. He had found a headache remedy that was more potent than aspirin, with fewer side-effects – but he hadn’t found a cure for rheumatoid arthritis.

His operation was very small – “a man and a boy”. Typically, his research budget was between £4,000 and £5,000 a year. Adams discovered that aspirin reduced the swelling caused by ultraviolet light on the skin. Working with an organic chemist called John Nicholson, he began looking for aspirin-like compounds that might have fewer side-effects on arthritic patients. “It was a bit hit and miss,” he told me. (This was long before John Vane had discovered how aspirin worked.)

“We weren’t as clearcut in our thinking as we might have been,” said Adams. He and Nicholson looked at hundreds of chemical compounds. They put several drugs through clinical trials, testing them on arthritic patients. One drug produced a nasty rash in a large percentage of the patients; another produced a rash in a smaller, but still significant, percentage. A third, ibufenac, an acetic acid, caused jaundice. “We had to sit back and have another rethink,” said Adams.

During this long process of trial and error, Adams synthesised a version of ibufenac that was not an acetic acid but a proprionic acid – ie, related to propane rather than vinegar. He assumed it would be toxic but, surprisingly, it wasn’t: it had a short half-life in the tissues. It was like aspirin, only you could take more of it. Adams and his colleagues began taking the compound, ibuprofen, when they got headaches. “We knew it was analgesic, because we were taking it well before it got on the market,” he says. He remembers making a speech at a conference after a few drinks the night before, having dealt with his hangover by taking 600mg of this new drug he had invented.

When Boots patented ibuprofen in 1962, Adams could have had little idea what he had invented – an analgesic that would compete with aspirin; a drug that, once its control had passed into the hands of the marketing men, would change the way we consume painkillers for ever. For the rest of his career, Adams continued with his efforts to find a cure for rheumatoid arthritis, without success (although ibuprofen has important uses in its treatment). Holding the original patent in his hands, Adams said, laughing, “We didn’t get anything. I think, in fact, we were supposed to be given a pound for signing away our signatures, but we didn’t even get that.”

Now that painkillers exist in a no man’s land between medicine and product, they don’t need someone to prescribe them – they need someone to market them. Don Williams, the man currently responsible for the design of the Nurofen pack, works in Notting Hill, west London. His office is just what you’d expect – minimal furnishings, varnished, blond-wood floors. In the upstairs lobby there is a shopping trolley full of products designed by his company, Packaging Innovations Global: Double Velvet loo paper, Head & Shoulders shampoo, Pot Noodle – and Nurofen. A former session guitarist from Middlesbrough, Williams is tall and slim, with wonderfully tasteful casual clothes and a fashionably shaved head. “That’s our philosophy,” Williams said, looking at the trolley. “That’s what we believe in. Getting things in trolleys. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re paid for.”

Packaging Innovations began designing Nurofen packs about five years ago. “There are very few brand icons that visually communicate what they actually do,” Williams said. The target design is “directly related to the brand promise”. Two years ago, the Brand Council, an advertising industry panel, named Nurofen as one of 100 British “superbrands”, one that “offers consumers significant emotional and/or physical advantage over its competitors that (consciously or subconsciously) customers want, recognise and are willing to pay a premium for”.

One of Williams’ innovations was to place the target in the centre of the pack, with a chevron radiating out to the sides. He also wanted more of the silver foil on the packs to be visible. Consumers, he told me, are visually literate – they see the pack design before they read the words. When he took over the design of Benson & Hedges’ cigarette packs, Williams made sure that every pack was gold, even the packs containing low-tar cigarettes, which had previously been silver. “We believe that brand identities should be recognised at a distance,” he said, “even through half-closed eyes, or sub-optimal conditions, or in peripheral vision.” In supermarkets, says Williams, “We want a blocking effect on the shelf. The chevron links all the packs together, so you get a wave effect.” As I left, he said, “I get more kicks out of seeing a pack in a bin than on a shelf.”

Are we taking more painkillers than we should? Dr Timothy Steiner, a dry, precise man and consultant physiologist at Charing Cross hospital in London, thinks so. He believes that one in 30 people suffer chronic daily headaches as a result of painkiller overuse. So what constitutes overuse? In a paper on headaches published in the British Medical Journal last year, Steiner wrote that it was hard to generalise, although “the regular intake of three or more analgesic tablets daily on more than two days a week are suggested arbitrary limits”. He won’t quite say that “medication overuse headache” is something the pharmaceutical industry is reluctant to explore. What he does say is that when the Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB), which represents the pharmaceutical companies that make over-the-counter medicines, set up a working party to investigate the possibility that painkillers might be causing headaches, the working party was disbanded. That was in July 2000. Steiner looks at me as if to say: this is a fact; you can make of it what you will.

I later spoke to Sheila Kelly, executive director of the PAGB, to get the industry perspective. Does she think the market is growing too fast? Kelly said she had figures only up to 1997. She doesn’t say so, but that is the year when the market really began to take off, the beginning of the big painkiller push. Kelly believes that “medication overuse headache” has been confused with some cases of migraine. “It’s not the analgesics that cause the headaches,” she said. “These people have a propensity towards migraine. It’s a coincidence. It’s become a non-issue, I think.”

Sitting behind his desk in his neat office, Steiner disagrees: he thinks that “medication overuse headache” is a “huge public health issue”. He explains the cycle: “Over-consumption of painkillers leads to aggravation of the headache condition. Headaches and analgesic use become more frequent, one driving the other. Patients, instead of taking painkillers for the headache they’ve got, take painkillers for the headache they fear they’re going to get.

“If painkillers reduce the sensitivity of pain pathways, there is likely to be, over time, a physiological compensation for that, which results in those pathways becoming more sensitive, leading to the requirement for more analgesia. Pain pathways are there for a good reason. They’re there to protect us from causing injury to ourselves.”

Once these compensating mechanisms come into effect, says Steiner, “people begin to look for something stronger”. They might go for codeine, an opioid drug related to morphine that can be bought over the counter in pharmacies, though not in supermarkets. Nurofen Plus contains codeine, as do Solpadeine, Panadeine and Co-codamol. “Once codeine is there as well,” says Steiner, “not only are you taking something that will cause chronic daily headache, but something that can be addictive.”

Steiner, by the way, says he finds the notion that Nurofen “targets” pain “an interesting claim”. If there is targeting, he says, “It’s not a process that the drug is responsible for. It’s a process that the body is responsible for.”

Robert, a 34-year-old writer, has been addicted to painkillers for 10 years. Typically, he takes 24 Solpadeine tablets – a mixture of paracetamol, codeine and caffeine – a day. Yesterday, he tells me, he took three packets: 36 pills. This is, of course, an extreme case of overuse, and Robert’s doctors have warned him that he risks permanent damage to his liver. Without painkillers, he feels “just awful. You just feel terrible. You go cold turkey. You feel like crap.”

Taking painkillers, he says, “has become ingrained in my day, my routine”. He remembers how it started. He had bad headaches, and his mother suggested Solpadeine. You might remember an ad for Solpadeine in which a man puts two cartridges into a shotgun, one representing paracetamol and one representing codeine, and blasts a clay pigeon, which represents the pain. “Bang! Instant relief!” says Robert. “It worked. I also noticed a slight chemical shift in my body. I wasn’t high, but it felt very calming, very good. I can’t say I rushed out and robbed some grannies. But I kept taking the tablets.” When his headaches came back, they were worse than ever. That was when he began to take the tablets pre-emptively.

For years, says Robert, he felt desperate and alone. He felt like a “freak”. A couple of years ago, he started surfing the internet, desperate for help, and found, to his surprise, that hundreds of people were posting messages on websites, such as over-count.org.uk. They make salutary reading. Every story is almost exactly the same. People take painkillers because they feel pain. At first, they feel better. But then they start to feel more pain than they felt before. Sometimes, they start by taking ibuprofen, or aspirin, or paracetamol. But the real problem is almost always that they are addicted to codeine.

“Even as I write this, I have tears streaming down my face,” writes one addict. “I am willing to try anything to get rid of these tablets,” says another. “All my veins are hot and rushing,” writes a third. “It’s lush. But it’s not worth it. I don’t want this addiction any more. I don’t want to spend all my money on analgesia. ”

As Steiner says, “There is a lack of education about what painkillers are. They are medicines, which have effects that are wanted, and a variety of unwanted effects.” These unwanted effects can include gastrointestinal bleeding, stomach ulcers, kidney and liver failure. Taking a painkiller might also encourage you to exercise when you shouldn’t, aggravating existing injuries. In 2000, a report published by scientists working in Oxford and Geneva estimated that 2,000 people a year were dying in Britain as a consequence of long-term painkiller misuse; Andrew Moore of the Oxford chronic pain clinic, who co-authored the report, estimated that side-effects and treatment arising from long-term prescription aspirin and ibuprofen use were costing the NHS between £170m and £250m a year.

Steiner believes that, while the medical establishment is beginning to understand the problems of painkiller overuse, there is a lack of awareness among GPs. “That’s right,” says Robert. “The medical establishment doesn’t have a proper system to deal with painkiller addiction. It’s not like heroin -if you’re addicted to an illegal drug, you can enter a detox programme. But if you’re addicted to a legal drug, it’s different. It’s harder for them to admit that a legal drug can be so addictive.”

The only method, says Steiner, is withdrawal. If you want to check into a detox clinic, as former painkiller addicts Matthew Perry and Winona Ryder did, you’ll almost certainly have to pay for it yourself. Cold turkey is the only answer. “My experience,” says Steiner, “is that people who try to taper off usually fail.”

Before I started researching this article, I took several painkillers a day – sometimes four, sometimes six. Sometimes eight or 10. This was before I stopped drinking. I would knock back three or four first thing in the morning, to deal with my hangover, which had not been entirely knocked out by the two or three I had taken the night before. I remember the fuzzy, headachey dash to the corner shop when I woke up with no painkillers, and the painkillers I took in the evening before going to the pub, when I was beginning to feel better.

Was I harming myself? Probably. Might I have ended up like Robert? It’s difficult to say. With painkillers, as with other drugs, everybody is affected differently. Why did I take so many painkillers? Partly, of course, because they reduced pain – but, more worryingly, I took them because I liked them. I take them only occasionally now.

This is what happens when a medicine becomes a product. It begins to seem more attractive, more desirable. It comes, almost literally, with a spoonful of sugar. In a sense, the marketing man becomes the doctor. As the late pain expert Patrick Wall wrote, “A crucial component in all analgesics, no matter how they work, is the patient’s belief that it works.” Nurofen works for me partly because I believe it does.

What does the future hold? More painkillers. More pain pathways becoming desensitised. Packaging that looks more and more attractive. New pill shapes. Faster-acting pills. And then what? A big marketing push in the developing world, domestic advertising restrictions, health warnings appearing on packets. There may come a time when people will be wearing patches to wean themselves off painkillers, or chewing low-dose ibuprofen gum – and what a marketing opportunity that would be.

A British charity is stepping up efforts to rehabilitate LSD, one of the world’s best-known “recreational” drugs, for medicinal use.

The Beckley Foundation, which numbers Professor Colin Blakemore, former head of the Medical Research Council, among its scientific advisers, is helping fund and lobby for a series of clinical trials to study the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide on the human brain.

The foundation has helped co-ordinate a network of researchers and supported the recent launch of one Swiss and two US studies, as well as prepare for a clinical trial in Germany and hold discussions about research within Britain.

The action follows years of suspicion by governments towards LSD since its original role in psychotherapy following the second world war was usurped by the counterculture of the 1960s, triggering bans in the US in 1968 and around the world after the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Amanda Feilding, who created the Beckley Foundation to promote psychedelic research, said: “We want to open up these incredibly valuable compounds that have been used throughout history. We know LSD is non-toxic and non-addictive. The only way to overcome the taboo is by giving scientific explanations of how to use them beneficially.”

Her efforts to restart research on LSD’s medical applications reflect a long-standing personal interest in the uses of the drug as well as a pledge she made on his death-bed to Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD in 1938 and died just two years ago, aged 102.

Sandoz, Mr Hofmann’s long-standing employer, sold LSD for psychotherapy from the late 1940s, but after its patent expired in the 1960s, the drug became more widely associated with figures such as Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. Swiss therapists were among the last to stop using it for research more than a decade ago.

However, recent efforts have resumed to study its effect on the brain, with specific applications including psychotherapy and treatment of addiction, pain, “cluster headaches” and potentially in degenerative diseases. While regulators have again begun to allow research on LSD, permission has been held up by continued suspicion.

Ms Feilding said her work had included identifying licensed manufacturers of the drug, and negotiating with the US authorities for strict control measures including transport in a locked safe, accompanied by police guards.

The Beckley Foundation’s scientific advisers also include Prof David Nutt, who chaired the government’s advisory committee on the misuse of drugs until he was sacked last year by Alan Johnson, the home secretary, after criticising the official decision not to downgrade its assessment of the dangers of cannabis.

By Andrew Jack in London
Published: February 12 2010

Evolvers Spores: The Future of Psychedelics

For millennia, cultures around the world expanded minds and visions with “teacher plants” – what we commonly know today as psychedelics. The widespread popularity of LSD during the 1960s awakened the Western psyche to these powerful substances, ushering in a period of wild experimentation that revolutionized art and music, inspired social movements, and opened new vistas of possibility for psychotherapy. But a swift backlash from the establishment made psychedelics illegal, repressing and marginalizing them as “dangerous drugs.”

Today, there is new potential for psychedelics to be reintroduced into mainstream culture, not as drastic catalysts of social upheaval but as tools that can help people overcome serious problems, explore mystical experiences, find inspiration, and understand more about consciousness and the brain. Psychedelic research with human subjects is underway again after a 35-year blockade, thanks to the efforts of non-profit organizations like MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) and the Beckley Foundation. Prominent newspapers and magazines are giving these substances another look, acknowledging their potential for therapeutic and spiritual breakthroughs if used with care. At the same time, the worldwide resurgence of interest in indigenous shamanism indicates a deeper maturity and respect emerging toward these ancient sacraments.

In this Spore, Evolver Regionals will explore and discuss the exciting new frontiers for psychedelics in our modern culture, as both scientifically verified medicines and intentional tools for personal development. Check the list below to find a Spore in your area. You can also email the regional host (via their group page) if you’d like to get involved in the planning of the event. If there is not yet a Spore in your community, email jonathan((at))evolver((dot))net to start your own

This, however, is at odds with recent research which concludes that in a susceptible minority, cannabis use can push the brain towards long-term psychosis requiring mental health treatment. Susceptible young people who use cannabis increase their risk of developing a chronic psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, and the more cannabis they consume, the higher the risk.

Additionally, people with schizophrenia who have a history of cannabis use tend to go through their first breakdown up to five years earlier in life than those who do not use the drug. Psychotic patients who fail to give up cannabis experience more symptoms, more relapses and end up in hospital more often.

These discoveries about the link between cannabis and psychosis have been widely reported in the media, often accompanied by warnings that street cannabis has risen in strength in recent years and therefore poses a major health risk to the susceptible minority.

This, however, is too simplistic: the type of cannabis taken is an important factor. Street cannabis has indeed changed over the years. So-called “skunk” does contain higher than normal concentrations of the main psychoactive compound, a molecule called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What is less well known is that another constituent, cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content.

The elimination of CBD may play a key role in the development of psychosis. Laboratory studies have shown that pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people. In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect, at least in animals. Studies in humans, though few in number, have produced similar findings.

The elimination of cannabidiol from skunk may play a key role in the development of psychosis

In one human study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/npp.2009.184), Sagnik Bhattacharya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in London used functional MRI brain scanning to study the effects of THC and CBD on the brains of healthy volunteers. They found that THC and CBD acted in opposition; in brain regions where THC increased neural activity from a baseline, CBD decreased it, and vice-versa.

In a further experiment, a group including one of us (Morrison), in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation, compared the effects of a mixture of synthetic THC and CBD, (to mimic traditional cannabis) with THC on its own (to mimic skunk). The aim was to find out if CBD offered protection against the psychotic effects of THC.

Healthy volunteers were given the molecules intravenously for two sessions. They received the same amount of THC during each session; the only difference was whether they received CBD as well. Thirty minutes after injection a consultant psychiatrist interviewed the volunteers and rated their experiences. Overall, volunteers were rated as being significantly less psychotic after being given THC and CBD compared to THC on its own. The implication is that the presence of CBD in cannabis counteracts THC’s tendency to trigger transient psychosis.

Another study from the Institute of Psychiatry by Marta DiForti and colleagues reached similar conclusions for chronic psychosis. They compared the cannabis habits of 280 newly diagnosed psychotic patients with those of 174 healthy volunteers who were matched for age, sex, educational attainment and socio-economic status. Both groups were equally likely to have tried cannabis, but, strikingly, psychotic patients were seven times more likely to have been skunk users. So in real life, as well as in the lab, THC unopposed by CBD appears to be particularly hazardous for mental health (British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 195, p 488).

This research has important implications for both street and medical marijuana. On the medical side, the question is whether CBD will be a useful antipsychotic in its own right.

To help find out, the Beckley Foundation is setting up a research project in collaboration with University College London and a leading medical marijuana dispensary in California which supplies over 30,000 patients. The study will analyse different strains of cannabis for their THC and CBD content. Patients will be asked which strains they find most effective, how they compare with conventional drugs, and to rate other effects, both beneficial and negative.

As for street cannabis, the Beckley Foundation hopes that this research will be used to make it safer. Skunk, with a typical THC content of 15 to 19 per cent and a CBD content of zero, has come to dominate the street market. Ironically, many consider skunk’s market dominance to be a consequence of prohibition, as illegal drug markets have always tended towards higher potencies.

The Beckley Foundation sees this as yet another argument for regulating the recreational cannabis market. Only in a regulated market can the knowledge from this research be used to create strains which are less hazardous for users.

The evidence supports the idea that nature knows best, and that the reintroduction of CBD would be beneficial. Two molecules are better than one.

Amanda Feilding is director of the www.beckleyfoundation.org Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust based in Oxford, UK, that promotes the investigation of consciousness and its modulation.

Paul Morrison is at the Institute of Psychiatry in London

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

From Time Magazine

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal’s drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal’s drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal’s case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world’s harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

“I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn’t having much influence on our drug consumption,” says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal’s, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it’s based on “speculation and fear mongering,” rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country’s number one public health problem, he says.

“The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization,” says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual’s “drug czar” and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that “it’s fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise.” However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report’s author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, “that is the central concession that will transform the debate.”

A hedge fund manager is providing financial backing to a new independent drugs committee set up by the former chief drugs adviser dismissed by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary.

By Richard Ford from The Times

Toby Jackson has provided £450,000 to support the new committee, which was officially launched yesterday by Professor David Nutt. Professor Nutt said the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) would provide the “best science” available on the dangers of recreational drugs.

He is likely to be invited to give evidence on drug harm to the Government’s official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) from which he was dismissed last year, according to Professor Les Iversen, its interim chairman. Professor Iversen said: “I welcome the development of this new committee. I think it is healthy to have public debate about drug policy and drug harms.”

But Professor Iversen made clear that the advisory council was the only statutory body set up to advise the Government on drugs and the damage done by their misuse. He said Professor Nutt’s group might be asked to give evidence to the council. “This is not the only group we will talk to on drugs,” he added.

The ISCD is being given £150,000 a year for three years by Mr Jackson, who has a personal interest in the role scientific information plays in policy formation.

Professor Nutt said at the committee’s launch in Central London: “This is the strongest grouping of scientists looking at drugs that we’ve ever had in this country. It is a truly independent committee. The model is used in other countries — the Dutch have a similar system. It’s something many of us have wanted for a long time.

“What this committee will do is provide to you the truth about drugs, unfettered by any political influence. This is a really interesting model: bottom-up science, saying we’d like to work as a scientific community to produce quality, independent, politically free, uninfluenced science. I would hope other scientific advisory groups in the Government would end up being like us.”

Asked if he had felt pressured by politicians in the past, he said: “You can’t work in a body based in a government ministry without there being a degree of pressure. A lot of it is covert; some is overt. It wasn’t particularly oppressive but it was always there. It’s great to be completely independent.”

Professor Nutt said he hoped the new body could work in conjunction with the ACMD, focusing on science while the official advisory group took a broader view of social issues linked to drug misuse.

The ISCD has 14 members including its chairman. Professor Nutt said five more members of the ACMD had expressed an interest in joining it and two had already signed up. Members came from a broad range of backgrounds including neurology, toxicology, chemistry, forensic science and education.

Mr Johnson dismissed Professor Nutt over claims that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than drugs, including LSD, Ecstasy and cannabis. Professor Nutt had previously clashed with Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, after suggesting that horse riding was more dangerous than Ecstasy. His sacking caused a rift between the Government and scientific experts it relies on for advice.

Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said: “While the ACMD lies wounded with seven vacancies and no permanent chair, scientists are attracted to a body that will have freedom to state the evidence on drugs harm as they see it without fear of being censured by ministers who don’t like what they hear.”

Read about Prof. Nutt and the Beckley Foundation’s exciting new research into the potential use of psilocybin for the treatment of depression and the recall of remote memories here.

We are also doing a research project investigating what underlies the “high” experience people find beneficial when smoking Cannabis.