Nutt on LSD

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Now Home Office drugs adviser wants to downgrade LSD from A to B

LSD, the powerful hallucinogenic drug made famous by The Beatles, should be downgraded from a Class A drug, according to the Government’s drugs adviser. (Actually, Professor Nutt made this known almost exacty a year ago post the Beyond2008 NGO consultations attended by yours truly, see NZ reference below /Blair

as reported in www.telegraph.co.uk

The news has emerged after the Professor David Nutt was ordered to apologise by the Home Secretary for saying that taking ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse.

Prof Nutt is chairman of the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which is set to recommend that ecstasy should be downgraded from A to B.

In a radio interview last year, months before he became chairman of the council, Prof Nutt disclosed that he also favoured downgrading LSD from A to B.

He said: “There are several drugs that are in class A and probably should not be there, like ecstasy and LSD. There are other drugs that should be up the scale.

“Ecstasy and LSD which tend to cause little dependence and relatively moderate degrees of personal damage are probably too highly classified.”

LSD is ranked as a class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The maximum penalty for supplying the drug is life imprisonment.

Prof Nutt, who took over as chairman of the council last November, went on to call for a major overhaul of the drugs classification rules in Britain.

He said: “I think it is time to have a complete review of all the drug laws. And I would like to have that in the UK.”

Prof Nutt said he was content that drugs like “heroin, crack, cocaine and metamphetamine pure” should remain as Class A drugs.

He told Radio New Zealand: “It is quite hard to move drugs out of classes. In the UK we have has these class system now since 1971.

“Only one drug has ever been moved down a class and a couple have moved up. Cannabis moved down and opiates moved up.”

Prof Nutt said that if alcohol emerged as a substance in modern Britain it would be classified as an illegal Class B drug.

He said: “If alcohol was suddenly to emerge in society now and it was suddenly assessed as other drugs of abuse it would be rated as a B class drug and therefore not be made legal.”

The Daily Telegraph disclosed last week how Prof Nutt had written in an academic journal that taking the drug was no more dangerous than an addiction to horse riding.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Jacqui Smith told MPs that his comments sent the wrong message to young people about the dangers of drugs.

She said: “I made clear to Prof Nutt that I felt his comments went beyond the scientific advice that I expect of him as the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/4581743/Now-Home-Office-drugs-adviser-wants-to-downgrade-LSD-from-A-to-B.html as reported in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Related articles by Zemanta

• Child drug offenders double as advisors say Ecstasy should be downgraded (telegraph.co.uk)
• Home Office’s drugs adviser apologises for saying ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse (telegraph.co.uk)
• Jacqui Smith ecstatically ignores more scientific advice (theregister.co.uk)
• Call to downgrade ecstasy to class B (guardian.co.uk)
• Council advises ecstasy downgrade (news.bbc.co.uk)
• In praise of … the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (guardian.co.uk)
• Smith says no to downgrading ecstasy (guardian.co.uk)

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Skunk ‘psychosis risk’ warning

BBC NEWS Health Skunk ‘psychosis risk’ warning

People who smoke the strongest form of cannabis – known as skunk – may be more at risk of psychosis than those who use milder forms, UK researchers claim. (but they dont ask, how does prohibition help, nor explore how unregulated and criminal markets induce madness? /Blair)

In a study of 300 people, those who had suffered an episode of psychosis were 18 times more likely to have smoked skunk than other cannabis users.

A Royal College of Psychiatrists meeting heard they were also more likely to use cannabis every day.

But experts urged caution over the interpretation of the findings.

The evidence on the link between cannabis and psychotic illness such as schizophrenia has been inconsistent.

We should take a cannabis history in a more detailed way like we do when we take a history of cigarettes smoking to establish risk of lung cancer – Dr Maria Di Forti

Earlier this year the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs concluded there was a probably a weak link between the two but that it is not yet clear if this link will become stronger as use of skunk becomes more widespread. (It didnt stop the the DAILY MAIL from reporting this headline “Why ‘skunk’ smokers are 18 TIMES more likely to become psychotic …UK – 2 Jul – psychotic vs clinical detection of some characteristics of psychosis, one of which is ‘but i like my skunk, i prefer skunk, dont take my skunk away’ falls way short of psychotic! )

Study leader, Dr Maria Di Forte from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said confusion had occurred because some other studies had lumped all cannabis use together.

She looked at data from 197 people referred to a mental health unit with a first episode of psychosis, of whom 112 had used cannabis at some point and 120 controls, 72 of whom had used cannabis.

Among those who used the drug, people who had a psychotic episode were twice as likely to have used cannabis for longer, three times more likely to have used it every day and 18 times more likely to use skunk.

NOTE: THC doses have anxiolytic and antidepressive properties. Higher doses have reversed effects: they are highly anxiogenic and depressogenic. High THC doses can produce schizophrenia-like psychoses, which usually go without negative symptoms and remit after THC has been excreted, mostly within one week of abstinence

(Mathers and Ghodse, 1992, McGuire et al., 1994, Hall and Degenhardt, 2000, Johns, 2001). /Blair

Stronger

Skunk is three times stronger than other types and now accounts for between 70% and 80% of samples seized. Dr Di Forte said if the preliminary results were proven it raised concern about the increasing availability of skunk. She urged psychiatrists to question their patients more carefully about their drug habits.

“We should take a cannabis history in a more detailed way like we do when we take a history of cigarettes smoking to establish risk of lung cancer.

“But it would be naive to say that smoking a joint is safe as we do not have enough data to reach such conclusion,” she added. (why is it not naive to say it is harmful absent evidence to say it is)

Co-researcher Dr Paul Morrison said skunk has higher levels of THC which causes the psychotic symptoms and lower levels of another compound called cannabidiol which seems to protect users from the effects of THC.

Professor David Nutt, an expert in psycho-pharmacology at the University of Bristol and member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said any new data on the risks of psychosis associated with skunk would be interesting but it was difficult to pick out cause and effect.

“If it’s true it would be important but there are many explanations for these kinds of findings.”

Richard Colwill, spokesman for the mental health charity SANE, said cannabis, particularly skunk, can be dangerous (not a word I would use, this is exaggeration, and thus harmful to credible education/intervention/Blair) for the significant (1% 0f 1% is not significant) minority of people vulnerable to mental illness.

“We have daily evidence that it can trigger frightening psychotic episodes, relapse, and in some cases a life-long mental condition such as schizophrenia.” (precautionary note: I see daily, evidence of clinicians fallacy in-particular from the Royal Society of vested interest in all this mayhem, but I see little truth that cannabis is neither pharmacologically addictive or in comparison to a raft ‘contraindications’ of pharmacology dolled out by practicing psychologists. /Blair)

Cannabis is currently a class C drug but the Home Secretary has recommended it should be reclassified to a Class B drug because skunk now dominates the UK’s cannabis market. (the reason here is illogical, and contrary to the ‘health’ interests of all UK citizens. The Home Secret’ary’s political agenda is more dangerous than any cannabis!)

If approved by [UK] Parliament, reclassification would take effect from early 2009.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7485385.stm
Published: 2008/07/02 14:11:11 GMT © BBC MMVIII

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