The last story from the Independent on Sunday is one of those wonderful coincidences that can be brought together only on the Internet.)

DRUG-TAKING: BRITAIN IS ‘WORST IN EUROPE’

January 2, 1999
From the London Times
letters@the-times.co.uk
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
By Victoria Fletcher and Ian Brodie

Victoria Fletcher and Ian Brodie on why two national ‘drug czars’ are refusing to take the soft option.

YOUNG Britons are much more likely to take drugs than any of their European neighbours, with "soft" drugs proving the most popular.

A recent survey by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs found that 35 per cent of British teenagers regularly took cannabis compared with 25.7 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Germany.

(Marijuananews note: They offer no comparison with Dutch data on marijuana use, so here it is. The numbers vary by age group and time of the survey. UK use appears to have risen:

(Sources: Netherlands Institute of Health and Addiction, U.S. National Institute for Drug Abuse; Council of Europe, ESPAD Report) )
Also see
Comparison of drug addiction levels in various European countries

The "recreational" drug Ecstasy has been tried by 9 per cent of young Britons but by only 2.8 per cent of Germans, 3.1 per cent of French and 1 per cent of Swedes.

For the past decade, schools and politicians have struggled to find a successful approach to slow the increase in the number of young people taking drugs. Campaigners have divided between those arguing for a tough, straightforward message that all drugs are dangerous - typified by the "Just Say No" adverts - and those arguing that children need to be given more information to inform their decisions.

Two years ago, the Government showed its commitment to tackle the drugs problem when it ploughed 1.6 million UK pounds into a range of innovative educational projects. In Bradford, local sports personalities worked with young people to discuss issues surrounding drugs, while in Newham, East London, a children’s theatre group acted out situations involving drugs.

However, Britain has become aware that the drugs education has so far not worked and that the problem is escalating. Exactly one year ago, the Prime Minister decided that the only way to co-ordinate drugs education was by appointing a drugs strategy co-ordinator. On January 4, 1998, Keith Hellawell took up the position with a mission to draw up a detailed and clear drugs education policy for schools.

"Your drug czar is right in recognising the dangers of all illegal substances," Mr Weiner said. The two men have met and found themselves in agreement on this and many other topics in their fight against drug use.

In the official American view, those in favour of legalising soft drugs always maintain that increased use is irrelevant.
(Marijuananews note: That is a parody of the anti-prohibitionist view. Increase in use is only one factor to be considered, but based on a comparison of Dutch and US and UK data, it does not necessarily follow that there will be an increase in use. Perhaps that is why the Times did not give its readers the Dutch data on marijuana use..)

According to Mr McCaffrey, a no-nonsense retired general, it is the most important reason against legalisation.
See
Drug Czar Lies Again About the Dutch, Who Respond With The Facts;
Czar’s Aid Says, "forces at work to legalize drugs are trying to bring
these wonderfully allied governments into conflict."

According to his staff, the point was proved in Alaska, which recriminalised marijuana after several years of reducing it to the level of a parking ticket.
(Marijuananews note: Actually, personal use in the home was completely legal under state -- but not federal -- laws. There are ten other states in which it is an infraction.)
The switch was prompted by a surge in use and increases in traffic accidents and overdose cases taken to hospital emergency rooms, Mr Weiner said.

Copyright: 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd

STOP TALKING TO CHILDREN ABOUT ‘SOFT’ DRUGS, TEACHERS TO BE TOLD
January 2, 1999
From the London Times
letters@the-times.co.uk
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
By Victoria Fletcher and Valerie Elliott

TEACHERS will be told to stop describing drugs as "soft" or "recreational" because that encourages children to experiment with cannabis and Ecstasy, Keith Hellawell, the drugs czar, said yesterday. Mr Hellawell is so concerned that the terms are misunderstood by children that he intends to launch a national advertising campaign to urge the public to drop them.

Mr Hellawell is so disturbed by the findings that the new tough message that all drugs are equally dangerous will form the centrepiece of a ten-year strategy that he will unveil shortly. Ministers are increasingly concerned that they are losing the battle against drugs; a recent study showed that more children in Britain use drugs than in any other European country.

Mr Hellawell said that a drug was a drug and that all must be treated with equal severity.
See
Shalala Says That Parents Are Wrong To Be Relieved
That Their Children Are Using Marijuana Instead Of Heroin!

Many children were less fearful of the effects of some drugs because of the terminology used by teachers, politicians and broadcasters.

(Marijuananews note: The result will be an increase in hard drug use. Excuse me. Heroin and cocaine use will increase. But it won’t matter, inasmuch as we are told that they are all equally dangerous.)

He added: "You have to consider the consequences that using such words as ‘recreational’ and ‘soft’ can have on young children. They know that Ecstasy is bad. But when it is called a recreational drug, that does not seem as serious."
See
UK "Drug Tsar" Calls Cannabis Campaign "Red Herring" --
Fears Improvement In Health And Academic Performance?

He said that the use of the term "soft drugs" was giving young people the wrong message: "Young people don’t even seem to understand the legal consequences of getting involved with drugs. They think a police caution is just like a slap on the hand. Young people say they will not get involved in hard drugs, but they fail to understand the problems even connected with cannabis. They might not get a visa to travel to the United States. There will be no jobs for them in the Army or the police force if they have been caught in possession of the drug. We must start getting this message through."

(Marijuananews note: That is only saying that the consequences of the marijuana laws are as dangerous as the other laws. This is just one more example of attributing the problems caused by marijuana prohibition to marijuana itself.)

See
How the War On Marijuana To Save The Children
Has Become A War On the Children To Save Marijuana Prohibition

Mr Hellawell’s comments are a thinly veiled attack on Estelle Morris, the Minister for School Standards, who in November urged schools to be more lenient with pupils caught experimenting with cannabis. Speaking to a teaching conference, Ms Morris criticised schools adopting "zero-tolerance" policies and said that pupils caught with drugs for the first time should not necessarily be expelled.

Mr Hellawell was appointed Anti-drugs Co-ordinator by the Prime Minister a year ago to create a nationwide strategy to tackle the problems posed by Britain’s estimated 200,000 drug addicts.

A national plan for anti-drugs lessons will be introduced in the autumn for pupils from the age of five. Mr Hellawell said that reformed drug users could be used in more schools to give talks to pupils from the age of 11 and that such first-hand accounts could prove one of the most effective ways of getting the message through to young people.

THE most liberal of EU governments are resisting any attempt to blur the borders between hard and soft drugs.

(Marijuananews note: Opposition to "legalizing" marijuana is not the same thing as "resisting any attempt to blur the borders between hard and soft drugs." The writer may have been given an assignment to present UK policies as the same as other countries, but his own reporting does not support the premise.)

Indeed Holland - famous for its coffee shops permitting the sale and smoking of small quantities of cannabis - argues that tolerance of soft drugs actually reduces misuse of harder drugs.

France and other more conservative states disagree and maintain an across-the-board prohibition. But the effect is the same: the distinction between hard and soft drugs is regarded as necessary.

Holland allows hundreds of coffee-shop owners to sell 5g of cannabis to each customer. These drug cafes survive in a legal limbo. It is illegal to supply a coffee shop with the soft drugs yet acceptable to sell them to customers. The police simply turn their gaze away providing that no one under 18 is served cannabis, that the coffee shops do not advertise or display drug menus in the window, that neighbours are not annoyed and that hard drugs, amphetamines and Ecstasy are not sold on the premises.

See
Dutch Drugs Policies Illustrated By Two Stories About Coffee Shops
And The New "Smart Shops" Phenomenon

Dutch officials say the policy works. The easy access to soft drugs keeps many young people out of immediate contact with hard-drug providers. The result is that the number of registered hard-drug addicts in Holland is, at 0.16 per cent of the population, significantly below the EU average. Certainly France and Britain have more addicts.

France, the US and indeed most international police organisations are not convinced. While much cannabis is home-grown in Holland, most comes from Morocco.

(Marijuananews note: No, almost all of the marijuana is Dutch grown. Most of the hashish still comes from Morocco, but that is also a function of prohibition.)

Such deliveries become immensely more profitable if they include other harder drugs, or at least a shipment of Ecstasy pills.

(Marijuananews note: This is not an argument against legalizing cannabis.)

Dutch dealers have been supplying cocaine to the Dutch Antilles - causing great concern in the United States since the Caribbean is regarded as a launching pad for drug shipments to North America - and are a major source of Ecstasy in Britain. The Dutch may thus be exporting their hard drug problem.
(Marijuananews note: This is vicious nonsense.

Third, if any of the preceding were true, and it is not, how would being either a manufacturing or transit country reduce domestic consumption? It does not. A country may export drugs, as DEAland has exported long cigarettes, but that has no impact on domestic consumption, as high tobacco use in DEAland proves.)

The border-free Europe enables dealers or consumers to shop in Holland. The Dutch also tolerate possession of small amounts of heroin and cocaine - up to 1g.

The proximity of Holland has encouraged Germany to start to liberalise its drug laws. The new Social Democratic Government’s drug expert, Christa Nickels, is urging the legalisation of so-called "fixer rooms", in which heroin addicts can inject themselves under supervision, using clean needles.

From the Independent on Sunday
January 3, 1999
sundayletters@independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/sindy/sindy.html
By Julian Kossoff

A GROWING number of young people - especially women - are addicted to over-the-counter medicines which help them cope with the stresses of everyday life.

More than 30,000 people in Britain are said to be hooked on drugs that contain opiates and stimulants which can be bought at high street chemists without a prescription.

The typical addict is a woman in her twenties living in London who takes several bottles of cough medicine or large doses of painkillers to cope with everyday stresses.

David Grieve, a former cough-linctus addict, runs Over-Count, a self-help organisation for over-the-counter (OTC) drug addicts. Mr Grieve survived a 10-bottle-a-day addiction to the cold remedy Phensydyl, and now campaigns for greater awareness of the dangers of all OTC drug addictions.

There are no official statistics but Mr Grieve estimates there are 30,000 OTC drug addicts in the UK. "I can buy a dry-cough medicine from my chemist for UKP3," he said. "Half a bottle contains as much amphetamine as a UKP20 bag of speed bought from a dealer. But when we buy these products we’re not told that. That’s why people are getting addicted."

Earlier this year the British Medical Association’s landmark report recognising the medicinal benefits of cannabis included a chapter on OTC drug misuse. It concluded that a warning about the addictive qualities of certain OTC drugs, with information that they included opiates, sedatives and hallucinogens, should be displayed on the packaging. The senior medical experts and academics who compiled the report also recommended that more information on OTC drugs should be made available to GPs.

According to Over-Count’s annual survey, the most abused OTC brands are the painkillers Solpadeine and Syndol, followed by Feminax, which is used to ease period pains.

Two-thirds of Over-Count’s 6,000 clients are women between the ages of 25 and 45. Mr Grieve believes they are prone to OTC drug addiction because they had to endure monthly period pains for which they sought out accessible remedies. Women got more of a "hit" from the drugs, he said. "Although women are generally smaller and have lower body weights, they’re advised to take the same dosage as men. Because of this they end up with a greater proportion of a drug in their system."

Kirsty Roberts’ addiction to OTCs was typical. A 30-year-old mother of three from Nottinghamshire, she habitually suffered from chronic back pain. "I was reading a magazine when I saw an advertisement for a new drug called Paramol," she recalled.

What Ms Roberts did not know was that Paramol contains dihydrocodeine, a morphine derivative. It was declassified as an OTC drug in 1995. "I found that as well as getting rid of my back pain I got a bit of a buzz. That made me feel really good so after a while every time I got the slightest twinge I’d have have another tablet. When I ran out or tried to go without the tablets, I would get the shakes, stomach cramps and would sweat profusely."

At the peak of her addiction Ms Roberts was on 24 tablets a day, a potentially lethal dose since Paramol also contains paracetamol, which can cause irreparable liver damage.

After more than two years she decided to quit and sought help from established drug clinics and projects. But they were used only to dealing with heroin and cocaine addicts, and could not help. Eventually a course of tranquillisers from her GP - and her own will-power - enabled her to quit.
See
UK Victims of Tranquilizers Urge That "Far Safer" Medical Cannabis Be Made Available -- IoS
"More people died from benzodiazepine usage than from such drugs as heroin and cocaine."

"People just don’t realise what’s in these tablets. What is needed is a warning on the packets. People should be better informed," she said.

Regulation of all drugs on the market and decisions over the licensing of new ones are determined by a government-appointed quango, the Committee on the Safety of Medicines (CSM). The majority of CSM members have financial interests in pharmaceutical companies, leading many to question whether it really is a truly independent body.

"In Britain a blanket of confidentiality has been thrown over the problem," said Maurice Frankel, director of the Freedom of Information Campaign. "It means that neither the Department of Health nor the pharmaceutical industry is under any obligation to satisfy consumer groups, expert medical opinion or public pressure."

By contrast, the American public has full access to information on every new drug granted a licence. At the pharmacy counter they can read up on all the clinical studies that have been made on the particular drug they are being offered, and receive a detailed list of all the possible side-effects as part of the packaging.
(Marijuananews note: While this is technically true, it is really meaningless. First, a large minority of Americans are functionally illiterate. Second, they don’t know that the data is available.)

The Department of Health maintains that strict criteria are adhered to for OTC drugs. An increasing number of prescription drugs have been deregulated to reduce pressure on GPs, and before medicines are declassified they must meet certain strict criteria.

"These include whether or not the product is safe for people to self-administer, and whether it has the potential to be addictive," a Department of Health spokeswoman said. "We have to weigh up the risks that the product carries against the benefits to the large majority of people who use them and in the correct way."

(Marijuananews note: In short, it is the policy of the UK government to make relevant distinctions between these drugs of the sort that they will not make when lying to children by telling them that marijuana is a dangerous as heroin.)