Cannabis – the joys of?
The British Isles are awash with chemicals. From the council estates to the landed estates, from the granny having a cup of cannabis tea for her arthritis to the stockbrokers snorting Charlie in the...
View ArticleThis fantasy world of drugs prohibition
Copyright 2003 Newspaper Publishing PLC The Independent (London) February 27, 2003, Thursday SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 19 LENGTH: 909 words HEADLINE: THIS FANTASY WORLD OF DRUG PROHIBITION BYLINE: JOHANN...
View ArticleDanniella Westbrook is luckier than she knows.
May 2, 2003, Friday SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 21 LENGTH: 1207 words HEADLINE: DANNIELLA WESTBROOK IS LUCKIER THAN SHE KNOWS BYLINE: JOHANN HARI BODY: Here’s a great idea for a TV show: let’s take a fragile...
View ArticleTory leader seeks rehab.
July 4, 2003, Friday SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 15 LENGTH: 911 words HEADLINE: MR DUNCAN SMITH SEARCHES FOR REHABILITATION BYLINE: JOHANN HARI BODY: The Conservative Party has invented a startling new...
View ArticleThe highs and lows of our ecstasy hangover.
Today is our fifth anniversary, and all the classic anniversary questions are rattling through my mind. Is it really five years since I walked from my local branch of Boots, squeezing her tightly in my...
View ArticleGun crime? It’s the child of drug prohibition
Ann Byfield is another pointless victim in the “war against drugs”. This might seem like a perverse conclusion. Wasn’t the 7-year old gunned down this week in Kensal Green by vicious dealers who were...
View ArticleConclusive proof that prohibition of drugs can never work
A month ago, the British police boasted that they had smashed the biggest drugs ring operating on our streets. Detective Superintendent Sharon Carr declared: “We have knocked out this network … The...
View ArticleAnother crazy bout of reefer madness
Reefer Madness is back. The 1936 US movie – loved by stoned students across the land – was made by a small church group as a serious attempt at instructing vulnerable teens about the “perilous menace”...
View ArticleThe best treatment for addiction: free heroin
When Erin O’Hara was using street heroin, she explains, “I was supporting myself either by drug dealing or sex work. I was constantly thinking about my next fix. Then, when I went into treatment I...
View ArticleFormer Deputy Drugs Tsar speaks out
The story of Mike Trace’s rise and fall is a parable of how drugs policy is formulated. He is one of the most widely respected narcotics experts in the world today. He has worked both at the Ground...
View ArticleWhere Kerry might be even worse than Bush
Like most of the world, I’m hoping George Bush is booted out of the White House 97 days from now. Nearly four years ago, the President drawled that US funds must be withdrawn from any international...
View ArticleAddicted to foolish legislation on drugs
The “war on drugs” finally flickered into the election campaign last weekend. You might expect it to be one of the biggest issues, since – along with the United States – our government is the most...
View ArticleTime for alcohol prohibition!
I’m a bit ill at the moment – don’t drink the Venezuelan water, folks! – so I’m calling a (justified) sickie. But wanted to post a few thoughts about drugs and alcohol: This has been the summer of...
View ArticleWill it take a Tory to legalise drugs?
Last week, I sat staring at the newspapers with a vacant spaced-out expression and a strange surging high. I found I couldn’t form words properly. I couldn’t even speak – and it’s all the fault of...
View ArticleWill drugs become the Tories’ Clause Four?
For a fortnight, the press pack has been obsessed with the brain-blendingly trivial question of what entered David Cameron’s aristocratic nostrils in his Brideshead years. But all along, there has been...
View ArticleHow Bolivia dealt a blow to the ‘war on drugs’
While Charles Clarke backtracks on the pitifully, pathetically moderate downgrading of cannabis introduced two years ago to stop the squandering of police time, the ‘War on Drugs’ is collapsing across...
View ArticleYou can support Afghan democracy, or you can support the senseless ‘war on...
This week, the British army is battering its way into a staggering, starving region – a place where half the people are suffering from malnutrition – to hack to pieces the only profitable crop they...
View ArticleA midnight raid that shows the folly of drug prohibition
London is a city soothed and stirred by illegal drugs, from the junior doctor keeping himself awake on a 48-hour shift (how did you think they manage it?) to the teachers relaxing with a spliff after a...
View ArticleThe case for providing heroin addicts with safe spaces to shoot up is now...
Kimberly Dowling was just another 21 year old blonde sleeping in the river-blown freeze under Waterloo Bridge. When the journalist Tanya Gold found her in a tattered sleeping bag a few months ago while...
View ArticleHow drugs brought the Taliban back to life
Jamilla Niazi is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheek-bones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan, to speak to me via webcam, her features are...
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