Tim Worstall

Cocaine use is up:
His letter cites recent British Crime Survey statistics showing that 6.6 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds used cocaine last year, compared to 1.3 per cent in 1996.
Thus:
The professor wrote: ”Cocaine is a very harmful drug to individuals and more [...]

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NHS patients are being put at risk because profiteering pharmacists are selling prescription drugs to Europe.
The fall in the pound re the euro has made things worse but:
Richard Ascroft, director of corporate affairs at drug maker Lilly UK, said: ‘We are definitely concerned about this. Drug prices in the UK are among the lowest in [...]

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Well, yes, this is indeed a good thing.
The chief executive of the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company will today announce that he is putting into the public domain thousands of potential drugs that might cure malaria.
Andrew Witty, the British boss of Glaxo-SmithKline, will say in a major speech that multinational drug companies have to balance [...]

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I know the answer, I know the answer!
A senior analyst at the FSS, the largest provider of forensic services in the UK on behalf of police forces, says traces of the drug can be found on any bank note regardless of its geographical location.
It takes just two weeks for a new note to pick up [...]

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As more women come out of the woodwork alleging affairs with Tiger Woods, and details about his mysterious car crash two weeks ago continue to emerge including that he may have been under the influence of alcohol and subscription drugs at the time,
Subscription drugs?
Sort of a “Drug of the Month Club” thing? [...]

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Another attempt to show that skunk is causing the entire population to go nuts.
Skunk, the powerful form of cannabis dominating the street drug market, is seven times more likely to cause psychosis than ordinary cannabis, scientists say.
Someone else will have to dig into that particular story but I do note this:
Most cannabis users remain healthy, [...]

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DRUG DEATHS
Tobacco 114,000
Alcohol 5,000 to 40,000
Heroin, morphine, methadone 944
Cocaine 147
Ecstasy 48
Aphetamines 83
Solvents 45
Cannabis 16
Source: Office for National Statistics, Department of Health and Ash.
Figures refer to 2004, where substance is mentioned on the death certificate, except alcohol and tobacco which are annual estimates.
DRUG ADDICTS
280,000-500,000
Source: Home Office research.
DRUG USERS
3.5 million a year aged 16 [...]

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Professor Nutt was told to resign as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse Drugs (ACMD) after a series of controversial outbursts including accusing ministers of ignoring scientific evidence to distort the drugs debate.
You hire the scientists to tell you the scientific truth. Sure, what [...]

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Funnily enough, the most fiercely anti-drugs people I came across there were the Dutch. They didn’t think dope was evil, they just thought that it was pathetic. For them, it was the dull, conversation-killing, boring thing that their parents did, or their parents’ loser friends, sneaking off to their coffee shops [...]

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Oh dear, another myth destrouyed by actual statistics:
Nick Ross, chair of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, commented: “There is no evidence of widespread use of hypnotics in sexual assault, let alone Rohypnol, despite many attempts to prove the contrary.
“During thousands of blood and alcohol tests lots of [...]

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But I think he got something a little wrong here.
On top of that, we also know that researchers can change their stated goal, or “primary outcome”, after their trial has finished. You might do a trial on a blood pressure pill, for example, stating that you will look to see if it can reduce heart [...]

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I started thinking it last weekend when Andrew Marr asked the PM, effectively, if he was on antidepressants.
No, not really. That was the original allegation, yes, but not the question that was asked nor the one that was answered.

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Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has called for the NHS to give out heroin on prescription to addicts where other forms of treatment have failed.
Why?
The pilot schemes used pharmaceutical diamorphine imported from Switzerland in a supervised clinic prescribed by a doctor.
Three-quarters of users “substantially reduced” their use of street [...]

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But it was liberal prescribing on the part of doctors that drove our evolving heroin problem in the 1950s and 1960s.
Jeebus.

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A Royal Navy frigate has seized cocaine with an estimated wholesale value of £33 million from a speedboat off the coast of South America.
Hmmm. 750 kg they got…..they’re valuing it at £44 a gramme.
That might be the wholesale value inside the UK (don’t know, sorry, not my milieu really) but it sure as hell ain’t [...]

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Now this I didn’t know:
Almost 800 people are now members of Dignitas. The clinic charges € 4,000 for assisted suicide.
They’re charging four grand for five quid’s worth of morphine?
Nice mark up there, ain’t it?
You could OD on 50 quid’s worth of heroin from half the pubs in the country instead……

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At direct government urgings, there are large tracts of land that are given over to the cultivation of the palaver somniferum, for the very good reason that the opium is essential for the NHS.
It is of course papaver somniferum but given the nonsense that is talked about the subject the error makes a certain amount [...]

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BBC Two’s Grow Your Own Drugs is looking for people suffering dandruff, indigestion or shaving rashes to try natural remedies in the new series. Call 0207 907 3469.
Both cannabis and the opium poppy grow quite happily in the average English garden and of course localising production will cut the violence and crime associated [...]

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So, medicines are becoming in short supply in some areas of the country.
Why?
Because people can make more money by selling them abroad (EU single market rules make ths not just legal but illegal to stop).
Part of it is the fall in sterling of course. But part is:
An agreement between the pharmaceutical companies and the government [...]

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A coroner has dismissed claims that cannabis is harmless during an inquest into the death of a trainee chef who died from the “toxic effects” of the drug.
What toxic effects of cannabis?
Geoff Roberts, the deputy coroner for Cheshire, said: “People use cannabis and think that it is a harmless property. We have heard clear evidence [...]

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