Making drugs like Cannabis and MDMA (Ecstasy) illegal is “The worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo.” [1]
Professor David Nutt British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist specializing in the research of drugs and once worked with for the British’s Ministry of Defense, Department of Health and the Home Office. In 2009, he was dismissed from government service after he did something radical. He proved the government wrong. Instead of simply agreeing that “all drugs are bad… mmmkay”, he did what any normal scientist do. He researched and classified all the legal and illegal drugs based on SCIENTIFIC analysis. [2]
The classification shows that a lot of the illegal drugs like Cannabis, LSD, MDMA and Magic Mushrooms are scientifically less harmful that the most common legal recreation drug, alcohol. The home office could not accept this scientific finding and fired Professor Nutt from his government position. Since then he had created the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, dedicated to the research on drugs based on scientific principles instead of the old 1961 war on drugs mentality.
He had published many research papers and books regarding the matter. And in his latest publishing, he stated that the war on drugs is “The worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo.” In short, the war on drugs has created a lot of barriers for scientific research on the drugs, simply because of its illegal status. Scientists and Financers cannot do much research if obtaining a small sample of the plant and compounds could bankrupt the institution and risk the scientist going to jail. But the few already published studies from all around the globe have showed some very promising results.
The drug MDMA (Ecstasy) has shown to be non-addictive and is extremely useful in treating many psychological conditions like Anxiety, Addiction, Depression, PTSD and eases the transition from life to death in palliative care patients. It was no surprise since Ecstasy was once a favorite medicine for psychiatrist back in the early 1950’s dubbed “Penicillin for the soul.” And of course Cannabis has shown many promising medical values for treating Cancer, Diabetes, Addiction, Arthritis, Glaucoma, Neuropathic pain and many many MANY more. Because of this stupid war on drugs, advancement of medical science into treating these diseases have been halted as much as 50 years back. That is 50 years worth of suffering and death that could be easily avoided if all these drugs were classified scientifically instead of drug fear mongering. As Professor Nutt has said, the global drug policies are more POLITICS than SCIENCE.
Side note: I don’t like it when people just say, “Oh because you can abuse it, that’s why it should be illegal.” That is a very stupid argument. Just because a few people can abuse these drugs justifies letting all the sick patients suffer and die? And besides, Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused drug on earth right now so why don’t we make Tiger Beer and Carlsberg illegal?
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[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt
PS: I would like to thank the TRS team for their support and all the readers for their viewership.
Mike from Singapore Cannabis Awareness
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