Medical Use of Illicit Drugs by Kathleen Cronin

Author:Kathleen Cronin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
Published: 2019-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

“Are Regulation and Innovation Priorities Serving Public Health Needs?” by Christopher-Paul Milne and Kenneth I. Kaitin, Frontiers Media S.A., March 8, 2019. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2019.00144/full. Licensed Under CC BY 4.0 International.

Illegal Drugs Will Be a Catalyst for Dramatic Scientific Innovation

David Nutt

David Nutt is an English neuropsychopharmocologist specializing in the research of drugs that affect the brain and their impact on addiction, anxiety, and sleep. He is the Edmund J. Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London.

The issue of drug use and harm is one of the most compelling challenges of the current era. The so-called “war on drugs,” in which the UN has tried to stamp out recreational drug use through attacking drug suppliers and drug users, has been fought for over 40 years at great economic social and human costs and despite being widely discredited it is still ongoing.

One less discussed impact of making drugs “illegal” under the UN Conventions and national legislation is the hugely negative impact this has had on research and clinical innovation, where illegal drugs can no longer be studied or used to develop medical treatments.

For many years I have argued that this impact is the worst censorship of research in the history of science and medicine, and that a more enlightened approach to “illegal” drugs will revolutionise medical science.

Banning Drugs in the UK Made Them More Popular

The premise that banning certain drugs for medicinal use will reduce their recreational use is clearly flawed, yet it still underpins current UN and almost all national regulations. This applies to the control of many drugs that have proven medical benefits, such as cannabis, psychedelics, and MDMA (the chemical name for the recreational drug called ecstasy).

Cannabis was considered a medicine for millennia, when in the 1930s, following pressure from the USA, it was decided that it should be removed from medicine in a vain attempt to limit recreational use.

In the ensuing 80 years, the number of people using cannabis in the western world increased at least twenty-fold, proving the premise underpinning the ban to be utterly wrong.

In reality there was never significant diversion from medical use to recreational use of cannabis nor is there ever likely to be. Similar social trends have been seen in all western countries and yet only The Netherlands has had the courage to face the facts and keep cannabis as a medicine. Though Germany, Belgium, and Spain, have recently allowed it.

Drug Ban Has Limited Research and Treatments

The banning of the psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD plus MDMA was also largely a gesture to pressure from the US and the UN, fuelled by media hysteria over grossly exaggerated harms.

There is little, if any, evidence that the ban reduced recreational use and yet it has severely impeded these drugs from being used as medicines and research tools.

Before their ban, both psilocybin and MDMA were used successfully in therapy. But the case of LSD is perhaps the most outrageous.

LSD: Most Effective Treatment for Alcoholism

Today, LSD is illegal in over 200 countries that have signed up to the UN Conventions.

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