Tim Worstall

A new report warns that the commercial cultivation of cannabis poses a “significant risk” to Britain linked to burglary, violence and the use of guns. The number of farms detected has more than doubled in recent years to reach almost 8,000, with many now set up in homes or flats rather than factories in order [...]

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Given the success of my last foray into this story I fihnd this interesting: The consensus among health professionals yesterday was that there is something about people who take sleeping pills that makes them likely to die earlier – but it’s almost certainly a complex combination of factors. If they need pills to sleep, that [...]

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Mexico seizes $4 billion in methamphetamine Rilly? The sheer scale of the bust announced late Wednesday drew expressions of amazement from meth experts. The 15 tonne haul could have supplied 13 million doses on the streets of the United States. Umm, what? $4 billion divided by 13 million is $307 a dose. That sounds a [...]

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As I understand it the allegation is that George took cocaine when a young man. Umm, yes? Rich young thing about town takes cocaine in 1990s Britain? That’s it?  

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Clubbers don’t care whether a drugs is legal or not, just how it makes them feel, research shows My word, that is a surprise, isn’t it? We would just never have guessed this from the existence of vibrant markets in, easy supply of, high demand for, heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, pot, hash, crack, LSD, ‘rooms and [...]

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But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. “Cartel war” does not explain [...]

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Now, certain prohibitionists like to make much – too much – of the possible impact of cannabis on mental health. This, they say, is sufficient cause to ban the drug and punish its users “for their own good”. Since it has been moved back up to class B, against expert advice, the maximum penalty for [...]

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Cocaine usage is up: Cocaine is the second most popular drug in Britain, after cannabis, with its use increasing markedly in the past decade from 0.6% of 16- to 59-year-olds reporting use to the British Crime Survey to 2.4% in 2009-10. This is equivalent to nearly 800,000 people reporting that they have used it within [...]

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Indeed, I don’t like the effects of this all that much either: but I’ll still note that markets will out. More than 50 drugs are now in short supply because doses which were intended for NHS patients are being sold to speculators who sell them in Europe for a profit. Experts blame rogue pharmacists and [...]

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Drugs were “readily available” at global financial company JP Morgan, the Old Bailey has heard.

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PLAYBOY: Isn’t cocaine the currently fashionable drug in Hollywood? NICHOLSON: I see it around. PLAYBOY: Have you tried it? NICHOLSON: Yeah, it’s basically an upper, but it doesn’t seem to do too much to me. I don’t think it’ll be fashionable for long, because it’s expensive and we’re in a depression; whether the world chooses [...]

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This is really rather funny, at least for those who have my own rather lugubrious sense of humour about matters economic. So there’s two drugs, Avastin and Lucentis. They’re really rather similar: almost exactly the same you might say. However, Avastin is the one licensed for use on bowel cancer and Lucentis the one licenced [...]

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Now maybe legalisation of all drugs isn’t the right step to take: regular readers will know that my view is that it is but perhaps I’m wrong. But similarly, maybe legalisation is the answer. And what we;d really like to do, if anyone or any country is brave enough, is for someone to actually legalise [...]

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They never do manage to get this value of drugs right, do they? In Argentina and Brazil, police seized a total of 3.4 metric tonnes of cocaine ready for shipment across the Atlantic. The drugs were wrapped in sealed one kilogram packets bearing Donald Duck logos, each worth £42,000 at street level – a total [...]

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Twenty years ago most people understood cocaine as a distant, almost mythical substance – prohibitively expensive and thereby restricted to either metropolitan high-rollers or those in the higher reaches of the entertainment industry: “God’s way of telling you you’re earning too much money,” as Robin Williams once said. I can well recall the first time [...]

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There is a further group of nearly a million older problem drug users, including 122,000 in Britain aged between 35 and 64 who use heroin and crack, who first became dependent in the 1980s and 1990s. Many have tried detox and methadone substitution but have not managed to stop. So you can be using these [...]

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The New York Times actually has a decent column in it. Why would Democrats support a program that has such a deleterious effect on their most loyal constituencies? It is, in part, callous political calculus. It’s an easy and relatively cheap way for them to buy a tough-on-crime badge while simultaneously pleasing police unions. The [...]

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Tesco is to start selling Viagra over the counter at half price. The pills were only available on prescription – or from dubious internet sources – until Boots began selling direct to customers last year, at £55 for four. But Tesco will offer fierce competition by selling Viagra at £52 for eight of the blue [...]

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Several hundred very good reasons are right here. We might also note that the number of deaths in the “War on Drugs” in Mexico is greater than the number of deaths from all overdoses in the US. And something like 4 to 5 times the number of deaths caused by the major illegal, smuggled, drugs, [...]

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