Comment & Debate
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC (June 2006). Britain ‘deserves its drugs problem’ says UN, The Independent (UK): “Policy reversals leave young people confused as to just how dangerous cannabis is. With cannabis-related health damage increasing, it is fundamentally wrong for countries to make cannabis control dependent on which party is in government. The cannabis pandemic, like other challenges to public health, requires consensus, a consistent commitment across the political spectrum and by society at large. Today, the harmful characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
In 1992 US national drug policy control director William J. Bennet called legalisation advocacy “stupid and morally atrocious”.[1]