Committee of MPs recommend drug legalisation

A select committee of MPs have concluded that prison for Drug offences just is not having the desired effect of decreasing drug use and is costing us all a lot of money and causing more of the crimes that its attempting to stop reports newspapers today.  Sense if you ask us.   However  the PM is likely to reject the advice for their own political gains and not peoples health and welfare..

Britain is losing the war on drugs and should consider the radical option of legalisation, a powerful committee of MPs will argue this week.   In a controversial move which could lead to yet another Coalition rift, the influential Commons Home Affairs Committee is expected to put pressure on David Cameron to establish a Royal Commission to draw up changes to the law. The MPs have concluded that prison sentences – which can be up to life for dealers of heroin and cocaine –  are failing to deter drugs barons, and may even be encouraging a crime-riddled black market in the substances.

Despite a youthful flirtation with the idea of drugs liberalisation when he first became an MP, the Prime Minister is now opposed to the idea – as is the majority of his party.  But a number of senior Liberal Democrats recently backed reforms under which drug users would receive treatment rather than be classed as criminals.

Last night, an MP on the Home Affairs Committee – which took evidence from dozens of witnesses, including comedian and reformed addict Russell Brand – told The Mail on Sunday that current laws were no longer ‘fit for purpose’.

The MP said: ‘The general view [of the committee] was that the drug laws in Britain are all a bit out-dated. We have a Drugs Act that’s really outlived its usefulness and that really belongs in the 1960s and 1970s. 

'It seems to deal with the drugs world as a fairly simple market with a relatively small number of controlled substances out there. But that’s not the case.’  The MP added that, although the committee ‘had not reached a settled view’ on the decriminalisation of drugs, its members agreed Britain was ‘fighting a losing battle over drugs policy’.

Details of the report will not be revealed until its publication tomorrow, but it is understood that it will call on the Prime Minister to establish a Royal Commission on drugs to report in time for the next General Election in 2015. 

Although the conclusions of such commissions are not binding on Governments, they have such clout that it is politically difficult for Prime Ministers to reject their findings out of hand.

The MPs are not expected to specify which drugs could be subject to the relaxation.  But their report follows the controversial decision by two American states, Washington and Colorado, to decriminalise cannabis – a move expected to be copied widely throughout the US.

The committee also studied the situation in Portugal where, for the past decade, it has only been an ‘administrative offence’, not a criminal, one to possess small amounts of any drug.  As a result, say supporters, criminal offences such as robbery have fallen, as have HIV infections from dirty needles used to inject heroin.

According to the most recent UK poll on the subject, conducted by YouGov, 49 per cent of voters supports keeping the law on drugs as it is, while 45 per cent support liberalising the law on soft drugs – either by downgrading offences or completely decriminalising drug use.

In the UK, under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, possession of Class A drugs – ecstasy, LSD, heroin, cocaine, crack and magic mushrooms – carries a jail sentence of up to seven years, while dealing carries a term of up to life.

Class B drugs – including cannabis, amphetamines and unprescribed Ritalin – carry a five-year sentence for possession and 14 years for dealing.  Even dealing in Class C drugs, such as tranquilisers, carries a possible sentence of 14 years – more than the maximum prison term for gun dealers.

Supporters of decriminalisation cite the example of gay marriage, which has gone from being a marginal issue to a key area of policy debate.

The committee is also expected to call for responsibility for drugs policy to be switched from the Home Office to the Health Department, as part of a shift in policy emphasis from ‘criminality’ to ‘medical addiction’.

In his evidence to the committee, Mr Brand said that taking drugs should not be seen as a ‘criminal or judicial matter’ and users should be shown more compassion. He argued that drug addiction was primarily a health matter, and while he approved of partial decriminalisation, he opposed a ‘wacky free-for-all’. In his 2007 autobiography, Mr Brand described his extensive use of drugs and how his ‘love’ of heroin in particular had damaged his relationships, health and career.

One MP on the committee revealed: ‘We are going to back a Royal Commission as the way forward.’

Royal Commissions – made up of a panel of experts appointed by the Government and headed by a distinguished public figure such as a judge –  have been used over the last 200 years to find answers on the key issues of the day, covering everything from the width of railway gauges to capital punishment. 

The most recent was the 1998 Royal Commission on long-term care for the elderly.  The Home Affairs report comes ten years after the committee’s previous examination of drugs laws.  That committee’s call for Ecstasy to be legally downgraded was firmly rejected by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary at the time.

 

Angela Watkinson, a Tory member of the committee, distanced herself from the report, claiming colleagues were on a ‘slippery slope’ by even discussing legalisation.   Last year, Tom Brake, head of the Lib Dem committee on Home Affairs, called on Ministers to establish an independent panel to examine the Portuguese experiment and to consider the ‘costs and benefits’ of decriminalisation or legalisation.

But former Tory Shadow Home  Secretary David Davis  said: ‘The failure of drugs policy is at the centre  of a whole range of criminal problems from organised crime through petty pilfering.   'So what is needed is a firm implementation of clear anti-drugs policies – not procrastination that appeases today’s metropolitan elite, who are surrounded by a haze of  confusion.’

Fellow Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘There’s a liberal, fashionable view at the moment that will back softening the drugs laws as they back gay marriage.   'But making these drugs legal is not the answer – the answer is to break up the gangs that deal in these substances.   'We should not be giving these gangs any encouragement by giving the impression we’re setting off down the soft route of decriminalising hard drugs.’

Last night, Baroness Meacher, chairman of the all-party group on drugs policy reform at Westminster, said a full review of drugs laws was now needed to cope with the influx of new drugs.    She said: ‘These are coming on the market at the rate of one a week – we cannot cope any longer.’   Last night, a government spokesperson said: 'Drugs are illegal because they are harmful - they destroy lives and blight communities.   'Our current laws draw on the best available evidence and as such we have no intention of downgrading or declassifying cannabis.

'A Royal Commission on drugs is simply not necessary. Our cross-government approach is working. 

'Drug usage is at its lowest level since records began and people going into treatment today are far more likely to free themselves from dependency than ever before.    'We will respond to the report more fully in due course.'

Cannabis legal Washington State from today

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243954/Pot-smokers-light-Washington-Space-Needle-state-legalizes-marijuana-sex-marriage.html

In Seattle today lots of dope smokers freely lit up a joint without fear of arrest after cannabis was legalised in the state of Washington in the USA.  Coming to a state or Country near you?  Lets hope so, criminalisation is bad for society and fills prisons with the wrong people.....

Hemp & Cannabis to return to being legal in the USA?

Hemp long baned in the USA as associated with cannabis, though it contains very little #THC the active ingredient that make #dope so potent, could be on its way back to being legally allowed to be grown.  Several states have recently passed laws planning to make even #cannabis legal even though this is against Federal laws

Read more

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20463504
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20346431

Interesting Documentary about Opium addiction and its history

Interesting Documentary about Opium addiction and its history now showing in Iplayer. Worth a watch

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01p65z1/

Mephedrone use on the increase? Did banning it increase its popularity?

A story local to Fantazia's home town of Cheltenham (which surprisingly has a high incidence of drug taking) about the rise of Mephedrone use and if its conclusion is true then it is more evidence for why drugs should never be banned as it only benefits the dealers and endangers the lives of the users....

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Spiraling numbers of young people are said to be getting their highs from lethal drug mephedrone.

The substance, which is better known as Meow Meow or M-Cat, is being sold on the streets of Cheltenham for between £8 and £15 per gram.

Police say usage of the drug has gone up since it was made illegal two years ago – a move the Government hoped would reduce its impact after it was linked to a string of deaths.

Problems linked to its use include paranoia, anxiety and heart palpitations.

Users say it is now on a par with cocaine and ketamine as the most popular drugs among young people in the county.

Users claimed that rather than reducing the drug's usage, making it illegal had led to people buying the substance from shady dealers.

He added: "Previously when websites were competing openly with each other, the quality of the product had to be high as otherwise people wouldn't go back.

"One of the problems since it has been made illegal is the quality has nose-dived.

"Now people are having to buy it on street corners and although they are paying the same price, they're being sold a product diluted with some other rubbish."

Tony France, of the Nelson Trust, which helps drug users in Gloucestershire, said the substance was here to stay.

"Meph has really claimed its spot," he said. "It shows the assumption that making it illegal would drive usage down was wrong.

"It is now in the top four in terms of usage among young people.

"I deal with lots of young people who have taken it and see the impact it has on them.

"It can pose a significant risk."

He said problems were more likely to arise from people overdosing on a night out – rather than the downward spiral effect of a substance like cannabis.

He added: "The best way to avoid coming to harm from drugs is not to take them at all.

"But failing that, mixing substances in your body at the same time – including taking something like mephedrone with alcohol – should be avoided."

Police said there was evidence to suggest the use of mephedrone had become more widespread in the county in recent years.

Acting superintendent Andrew Wasley said: "Since about 2008 we have seen an increase in the reporting of intelligence concerning its use in Gloucestershire."

Drug death stats are out and Helium and barbiturates top

Drug death stats are out and Helium and barbiturates top making a nonsense over the moral panic often in the press about the use of ecstasy and legal highs.

More info on recreational drugs...

Full story:

The inert gas helium and barbiturate drugs contributed to more deaths last year than ecstasy, cannabis, mephedrone and GHB, official figures show.

According to Office for National Statistics data released on Wednesday, the number of deaths mentioning barbiturates increased from six in 2007 to 37 in 2011, the highest number since 1996, despite the number of prescriptions for barbiturates more than halving over this period.

Over the same period, deaths involving helium have risen from two to 42. By comparison there were just seven cannabis-related deaths last year while ecstasy was responsible for 13 deaths. Cocaine claimed the lives of 112 people.

Almost all of those who died taking barbiturate and helium were recorded as suicides. Helium in particular has seen a steep rise in its use. Between 1993 and 2007 just 18 people died using the gas. The gas has become a feature of both literature and public policy debate in the last 20 years as the row over right-to-die has become more intense.

Overall, there were 1,772 male and 880 female drug poisoning deaths – involving both legal and illegal drugs – in 2011, a 6% decrease since 2010 for males and a 3% increase for females.

Over half of all the deaths related to drug poisoning involved opiates. In 2011 heroin or morphine, were involved in 596 deaths.

However, there has been a fall in deaths involving heroin or another opiate. For men the mortality rate has fallen sharply in the last two years, down from 27.9 deaths per million population in 2009 to 17.1 in 2011. This is a 39% fall and is the lowest rate since 1997.

The decrease in deaths has many reasons but ONS points to evidence of a "heroin drought" in the UK, "with shortages in the availability of heroin continuing in some areas in 2011-12" with a result that the street purity of opiates sold has dropped.

Despite fears from drug workers that the low purity levels would lead to overdoses, the reduced supply seems to have led to less demand.

Results from the British Crime Survey, the ONS says, suggest there was a significant decline in the proportion of 16-to-59-year-olds reporting use of heroin in the last month between 2009-10 and 2010-11. This is backed up by evidence from the NHS's National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse which said that the number of adults newly entering treatment for heroin and crack use has fallen by 15% in two years.

"[The data] suggests that this decline is probably due to reduced demand rather than any shortfall in services. These factors may explain the decline in deaths involving heroin/morphine that has been seen over the last couple of years," said the ONS.

Is it already to late to save your intelligence? Cannabis smokers beware...

Is it already to late to save your intelligence?  Cannabis smokers beware... a new report out today based on a study of 1000 young people born in 1972 says that people who smoke cannabis prior to the age of 18 face a  loss in IQ.  Apparently if you start after this age there is no effect on the IQ.   The reports and evidence against dope smoking seem to be building up.  Is this political bias or will it turn out to be true. Time will tell.
Read more about Cannabis:  http://www.fantazia.org.uk/drugs/cannabis.htm
Read the full BBC story:

Young people who smoke cannabis run the risk of a significant and irreversible reduction in their IQ, research suggests.

The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand.

An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 - while their brains were still developing - suffered a drop in IQ.

A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve.

For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand.

They assessed them as children - before any of them had started using cannabis - and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38.

Having taken into account other factors such as alcohol or tobacco dependency or other drug use, as well the number of years spent in education, they found that those who persistently used cannabis suffered a decline in their IQ.

The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ.

The effect was most marked in those who started smoking cannabis as adolescents.

For example, researchers found that individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and then carried on using it for years showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

Stopping or reducing cannabis use failed to fully restore the lost IQ.

The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: "Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users."

"Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects."

One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.

"This work took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users.

"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today.

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research, also at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry but not involved in the study, said this was an impressive piece of research.

"The Dunedin sample is probably the most intensively studied cohort in the world and therefore the data are very good.

"Although one should never be convinced by a single study, I take the findings very seriously.

"There are a lot of clinical and educational anecdotal reports that cannabis users tend to be less successful in their educational achievement, marriages and occupations.

"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis - my daughter callers them stoners - seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated. This study provides one explanation as to why this might be the case.

"I suspect that the findings are true. If and when they are replicated then it will be very important and public education campaigns should be initiated to let people know the risks."

Psychedelic drugs can unlock mysteries of brain – former government adviser

David Nutt says research into mental illness is hampered by the prohibition of drugs such as psilocybin and LSD (Reported in the Guardian)

Scientists should have access to illegal psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin to aid them in brain research, according to the government's former drug adviser Professor David Nutt. He said that research into the deepest mysteries of the brain, including consciousness and mental illness, had been curtailed by the prohibition of the drugs.

Prof Nutt said that scientists might find treatments for conditions such as schizophrenia by using modern techniques to study the effects of psychedelic drugs on the brain.

"Neuroscience should be trying to understand how the brain works," said Nutt, who is professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. "Psychedelics change the brain in, perhaps, the most profound way of any drug, at least in terms of understanding consciousness and connectivity. Therefore we should be doing a lot more of this research.

"It's extraordinary that 40 years of advances in brain imaging technology and there's never been a study about this before. I think it's a scandal, I think it's outrageous the fact these studies have not been done. And they've not been done simply because the drugs were illegal."

Speaking to the Guardian ahead of a lecture he will give at a University College London neuroscience symposium on Friday, Nutt said that a volunteer for a recent experiment pulled out of the study because he was worried that "being in a study with a so-called illegal drug could mean he couldn't travel to some countries, such as America. To inhibit research to that extent is an outrage."

Nutt's views will challenge governments around the world which, largely, classify psychedelic drugs as harmful and illegal. The professor is used to being a thorn in the side of the authorities. In 2009, the UK's then health secretary, Alan Johnson, sacked him from his post as chair of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for publicly stating that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

Hundreds of clinical trials of psychedelic drugs such as LSD were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, and successful treatments, including one for alcohol addiction, came out of the work. Since LSD was banned around the world, however, the number of scientific studies has dropped to virtually zero, and there have been no studies using modern imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at what parts of the brain are affected by it.

Nutt recently published research, with colleagues at Cardiff University, on the effects of psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – on the brain. His team had assumed the drug might increase activity in certain parts of the brain, to explain the experience that users get when they eat magic mushrooms. Instead, MRI scans of 30 healthy volunteers showed that psilocybin seemed to decrease activity in the regions of the brain which link up different areas. The study was published in January in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is a hugely important way of perturbing the brain to understand the nature of consciousness," said Nutt. At his lecture on Friday, he will examine whether psilocybin's effects on the brain can be used as a model for psychosis. Some of the brain alterations seen as a result of taking psilocybin, he said, are similar to those seen in the brains of people with prodromal schizophrenia.

Psilocybin seems to suppress the actions of a brain system called the "default mode network" which is active whenever a person is, for example, reflecting about the world rather than engaged in a specific activity. The "task-positive network" is engaged when a person focuses on a specific job and it operates out of phase with the default mode network. But in schizophrenia, the networks are much more in phase and, under psilocybin, they are completely in phase.

"So, we're thinking [psilocybin] might be an interesting model for early stages for schizophrenia, it might allow us to test new drugs," said Nutt. "When people start to become psychotic, their ego boundaries break down, the relationship between them and the world gets disrupted and the relationship between their different inner experiences gets mixed up. Eventually they start hearing their own thoughts as someone else's voice.

"That breakdown of connectivity in the brain is very classic in schizophrenia. If we can produce this in a laboratory in a normal volunteer, we can then look for new treatments and it is much more efficient to do that in normal volunteers than try to find young people who are starting to develop their illness and it's ethically more acceptable too."

Nutt and his colleagues are also studying potential uses for ecstasy, also known as MDMA. "The therapeutic value of MDMA for psychotherapy has been widely known until it was banned and has hardly been studied since. There have only been a couple of MDMA imaging studies, but none of them using cutting-edge technologies, so we're doing that at present."

In collaboration with Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College London, Nutt also wants to further his research into more psychedelic drugs such as LSD and ibogaine, a derivative of African root bark, which is used to treat addiction in Thailand and Cambodia.

Carrying out such work is usually difficult for researchers, however, because they have to make such lengthy applications for licences to use illegal drugs. And even if the research went ahead and showed benefits from the drugs, it is unlikely doctors would be allowed to prescribe them. Nutt recently called for the UK's classification system of drugs to be rewritten to reflect more accurately their relative harms, and called for a regulated approach to making drugs such as MDMA and cannabis available for medical and research purposes.

"Regulations, which are arbitrary, actually make it virtually impossible to research these drugs," said Nutt last month. "The effect these laws have had on research is greater than the effects that [George] Bush stopping stem cell research has had, because it's been going on since the 1960s."

Police Chiefs says its a waste of time banning new legal highs

Police Chiefs in the UK have warned the government that banning new legal highs through legislation is a waste of time as the chemist overseas are producing different ones faster than legislation can react meaning the police are wasting lots of time arresting people who's drugs turn out not to be on the banned list.

The Police think a better policy will be to make the sellers of legal highs legally responsible for any harm that comes to the users of the products.  However as they are often marketed as planet food, its seems a difficult proposition. Could a garden center or supermarket be responsible if a customer miss uses a product?  Further hows is harm going to be proven?    The National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths logged 127 suspected deaths in Britain with links to "legal high" drug, mephedrone, over the past two years.  However as none of the logs gave the drug as the cause of death I can see how the seller could be held accountable. It all show the stupidity of the current drug laws.  Why hold sellers responsible.  Treat people as responsible for their own actions and if consequence happen then they only have themselves to blame.....

Read about legal highs...
Original story...

LSD could be good treatment for alcoholism

Scientist believe LSD could be an effective one use treatment for alcoholism.  You can read the full story from the Daily Mail below.  This is one of a number of stories recently that say that illegal recreational drugs could and can have positive medical benefits for some people. Sadly for many years recreational drugs were banned with only the harm they could possibly do being taken into account, this banning has meant that researchers have found the substances very hard to legally use in tests on patients stifling  possible cures and debate.  With the war on drugs failing its time to look at all the substances again and not just blanket banning them all because people enjoy them.
Read full story...
Find out more about LSD...

Paris Hilton prosecutor arrested for crack

Oh dear, one time  Vegas Deputy District Attorney David Schubert   who made his name pursing celebrities on drugs charges to increase his own fame and has fallen victim of his vanity its is reported in the Daily Mail as he is busted on Crack cocaine charges.   Now he faces a criminal investigation  after police allegedly caught him buying crack cocaine through a street dealer - who claimed Schubert buys $40 of cocaine  three or four times a week.

A patrol officer stopped the deputy district attorney's BMW in Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon when he spotted what he thought was a drugs transaction.

According to an arrest report seen by TMZ, the officer watched Schubert pick up a black man from an apartment block, then drive to another address where he dropped him off.  Schubert drove round for several minutes and then picked up the man again, police claim. The officer pulled the car over, but the suspected dealer jumped out and fled. Police gave chase and took him into custody. According to the arrest report, the man, named as Raymond Streeter, told officers he knew Schubert as 'Joe'. In 2011 he prosecuted  Paris Hilton, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanour charges after police found 0.8grams of cocaine in her handbag.

Drug temptation is everywhere... his career is now over, whilst its probable that its justified in this case, treatment is a better answer...

Witney Houston dead. Sad end for a talented performer blighted by self abuse

Sadly the troubled, undoubtedly talented, singer and some time actor Witney Houston has died in the US aged 48.  The cause of her death is not yet known but her troubles with drink and drug abuse are widely known and it is a sadly premature end to a glittering career.   Illegal drugs like alcohol and prescription drugs in the hands of an unhappy person can be  unfortunately used to blot out life's troubles. Witney is reported to have in the past used Crack cocaine and this can have a devastating impact on health and functionality far greater than club drugs like Ecstasy generally do and there is no doubt in my mind they should not be both classed criminally Cat A.  A sad loss. The world will mourn a little today.  Bye Witney
Crack information...
Drugs information...

Scientist announce Ketamine could be good for some people...

Scientist are now claiming that the horse tranquilliser Ketamine (a favourite with clubbers) could actually be good for some people.  Used on people suffering depression it could provide almost an instant cure.  More testing has to be undertaken but it does show that just blanket banning drugs because people taken recreationally means we could be missing some real benefits.  Science needs to be the decider not conservative politics telling people not to do things.

Read more on Ketamine: http://www.fantazia.org.uk/drugs/ketamine.htm
Read the original article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2094250/Ketamine-Club-drug-offer-instant-remedy-severe-depression.html

Famous people quotes about drugs: Mayor Boris Johnston

We hope to bring you quote from famous people about their drug taking pasts. Here's a topical person to start us off. Old Etonian millionaire and one time member of notorious high society hooligan society Billington Club Mayor Boris Johnston's said about his drink and drug taking past whilst appearing on British comedy show "Have I Got News For You" he joked about using class A drugs, bizarrely quipping ‘I think I was once given cocaine, but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose’.

He was equally ambivalent about binge drinking, in a newspaper column he wrote for the Daily Telegraph in 2005 in with he admitted finding it ‘rather admirable to get bladdered, leathered, rat-arsed and otherwise hogwhimpering drunk.”

"‘We drink the Russians off the balcony; we drink the Ukrainians under the table. Of our teenagers, 40 per cent have been dead drunk more than 10 times in the past 12 months, compared with a piffling 7% of French teenagers,” he chortled.

“It was as I was skimming through these statistics that I suddenly had an insight. I realised to my horror that I was reading the figures with pride," he said.

Richard Branson says don't lock up drug takers

Richard Branson, the millionaire Virgin group owner told MP's today to change the law and stop locking up drug takers. He said the policy had failed the country and the people and not stopped drug taking (which includes many harmless clubbers). The businessman said Britain was spending more money than any other country in Europe on fighting drug taking but still had the highest use. Previously Richard Branson had admitted to taking cannabis himself and he certainly has his finger more on the pulse than the average politician. Good on you Richard for standing up for something you believe in. Maybe parliament will listen to you, as they certainly don't listen to otherwise law abiding ravers.

In other news today Professional Nut the ex head of the drug advisory council said that rules on the use of magic mushrooms and ecstasy should be relaxed so it was not a criminal offence to take as both drugs had many possible beneficial properties and could be used successfully to treat people with depression.