Professor David Nutt, who was the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, sparked outrage earlier this week

Professor David Nutt, who was the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, sparked outrage earlier this week after he criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug.It is understood Home Secretary Alan Johnson asked him to consider his position in the wake of the comments, saying he had "no confidence" in him.The charity DrugScope said the development was "extremely serious and concerning".Director of communications, Harry Shapiro, said: "There are few areas of policy as important but at the same time as difficult, complex and emotive as drugs policy. That is why it is vitally important that the Government receives advice that is not only evidence based, objective and robust but that is also public and transparent."However, former Government chief scientific adviser Sir David King said Professor Nutt had "stepped over the line" in criticising a politician.On Friday night, he said that advisers had to maintain the trust of both public and ministers and it was important to do that in a sensitive way."I think that where David has stepped over the line is being openly critical of the politician concerned," he said.

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former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles

Asya Richardson, through her lawyer, claims she was unaware that the man she knew as a music company impresario used drug money for the down payment on the house just outside Mullica Hill they bought in the summer of 2005.former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles, wants her money-laundering conviction, linked to the couple's purchase of a luxurious home in South Jersey, overturned.
"Asya Richardson was a naive young woman who fell in love with, and was duped by, Alton Coles, a deceptive, manipulative individual . . . who hid his illegal activities from her and used her as part of his legitimate front to the outside world," Richardson's lawyer, Ellen C. Brotman, argued in a post-trial motion heard today by U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick.Brotman has asked the judge either to overturn Richardson's conviction or grant her a new trial. Surrick, after an hour-long hearing, said he would take the issue under advisement. Not surprisingly, federal prosecutors argued that the conviction should stand.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bresnick said that Richardson, 28, knowingly went along with Coles, helping to launder drug proceeds by negotiating the down payment on the $488,000 house with cash transferred from his bank accounts and by lying about her employment and income records."All the evidence established that she knew Coles was a drug dealer and she knew his money was drug money," Bresnick said, describing the house purchase as a "classic money-laundering case."Coles was arrested at the Gloucester County residence, on Dillon's Lane just outside Mullica Hill, in August 2005 as investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a series of raids that capped a two-year investigation of his $25 million cocaine network. Coles and Richardson had moved into the property two weeks earlier.Richardson was later charged with money-laundering and conspiracy to commit money-laundering. She is the half-sister of former Philadelphia baseketball star Jerome "Pooh" Richardson, who called her hours before the raid to warn that the "feds were coming."Pooh Richardson testified for the prosecution this year at the trial of a former Philadelphia police detective who was convicted of obstruction of justice for leaking him information about the raid.
Aysa Richardson was convicted along with Coles and four others, including a second Coles girlfriend, in March 2008. Coles, 35, was sentenced to life plus 55 years. Richardson has had her sentence delayed pending the outcome of her post-trial motions. She could be sentenced to 78 months. Whatever the outcome, the motions have offered a look at the twisted relationship between Coles and the women he dated while under investigation.Brotman, in papers filed last year, said Coles "used the women in his life as tools of his trade."

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SPANISH drug traffickers are now taking to the skies to avoid border controls.

Smugglers are loading up mini planes with sacks of marijuana in a bid to evade Moroccan security. Investigations carried out by Moroccan police have exposed dozens of Spaniards believed to be violating their airspace. Some 13 drug planes have already been intercepted this year, while just seven were seized in 2007. Last month, two Spaniards were arrested for undertaking a drug smuggling reconnaissance mission. They were spotted circling over the east of Morocco, in another trademark mini plane.

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cocaine trafficking syndicate has been cracked in a series of raids on the Gold Coast

cocaine trafficking syndicate has been cracked in a series of raids on the Gold Coast, police say.The Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) and Gold Coast police simultaneously executed five search warrants on properties at Carrara, Southport, Burleigh Waters, Surfers Paradise and Molendinar on Thursday morning.Four people were arrested during the raids with charges relating to the trafficking of dangerous drugs, possession of prohibited drugs and possession of firearms laid.
A total of 2.5kg of cocaine was seized during the entire operation, with a street value estimated by the CMC at $750,000.Police also seized $37,650 in cash, steroids, a .357 Magnum firearm and ammunition.The raids signal the closure of a 13-month anti-organised crime operation led by the CMC in partnership with various Queensland and NSW police services.

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Royal Dutch Gymnastics Federation handed Yuri van Gelder a one-year suspension for testing positive for cocaine

Royal Dutch Gymnastics Federation handed Yuri van Gelder a one-year suspension for testing positive for cocaine at the Dutch Championships in June, ending his chances to compete at the 2012 Olympics.Van Gelder will be able to return to international competition in the summer of 2010, but International Olympic Committee rules stipulate that athletes who receive any sort of suspension for more than six months are not eligible to compete at the next Olympic Games. …
Gymnastics Examiner – After cocaine suspension, Yuri van Gelder will miss 2012 Olympics

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Lambda Iota became a drug house during the 2006 - 2007 school year.

Federal prosecutors say Lambda Iota became a drug house during the 2006 - 2007 school year. Twenty-five-year-old Bent Cardan of California supplied the fraternity president with the cocaine. He'll also be on four years supervised release and pay a $4,000 fine. Cardan's Connecticut supplier is serving a 70-month sentence for drug trafficking. The former fraternity president, 25-year-old Christopher Duncan, is serving two years probation. The Justice Department has moved to seize the frat house.former University of Vermont student will spend six months in jail for supplying drugs to his fraternity's cocaine ring.

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Alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than illegal drugs

Alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, the government's top drugs advisor said Thursday.Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London called for a new system of classifying drugs to enable the public to better understand the relative harm of legal and illegal substances.
Alcohol would rank as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone, he said in a briefing paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.Tobacco would come ninth on the list and cannabis, LSD and ecstasy "while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively". The ranking is based on physical harm, dependence and social harm.
"No one is suggesting that drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree," said Nutt, the chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.He added: "We have to accept young people like to experiment -- with drugs and other potentially harmful activities -- and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives.
"We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."Nutt criticised ministers for their decision to upgrade the classification of cannabis in January from class C -- which includes tranquillisers and some painkillers -- to the higher class B alongside amphetamines.The decision, which increases the penalties to a maximum 14 years in jail for dealing and five years for possession, was against scientific advice and came just five years after cannabis had been downgraded from class B to C.Nutt said such policies "distort" and "devalue" research evidence and lead to mixed messages to the public.While he acknowledged that cannabis was "harmful", he said its use does not lead to major health problems. Users faced a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness compared to the risks of smokers contracting lung cancer.Nutt caused controversy earlier this year by saying that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horseriding, a claim he repeated in his paper.

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90,000 people will die over the next 10 years from drink unless cheap alcohol is banned

90,000 people will die over the next 10 years from drink unless cheap alcohol is banned, a new report has claimed. Skip related content
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Drink deaths 'treble in 25 years'
Call made for minimum alcohol price
Alcohol 'Will Kill 90,000' In Next Decade
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The charity Alcohol Concern issued the sobering warning after its latest research found drink-related deaths have trebled in Britain over the last 25 years from 3,054 in 1984 to 8,999 in 2008.

To combat the problem, it proposes banning cheap booze by forcing suppliers to charge at least 50p per unit.

Doing so would substantially reduce hospital admissions, crime and absence from work, the report claims.

Research by the University of the West of England used by Alcohol Concern found there would be 90,800 deaths linked to drink by 2019 if current consumption continues.

The lead author, Professor Martin Plant, said: "The UK has been experiencing an epidemic of alcohol-related health and social problems that is remarkable by international standards."

The findings coincide with a new drive to reduce binge drinking in Greater Manchester, where the problem is particularly acute.

Councils in the area are actively considering a minimum price for booze sold in its pubs, clubs and supermarkets.

Police there have just begun a clampdown on licensees and bar staff who illegally serve people who are already drunk.

But although binge drinking is usually blamed on the younger generations, Alcohol Concern has revealed the steepest rise in alcohol-related deaths is among the 55 to 74-year-olds.

Peter Ivory still finds it hard to believe how close he came to being in that category.

The 62-year-old former store manager from Sunderland always thought of himself as a social drinker.

A few years ago his holiday was cut dramatically short when he was flown back from Spain with excruciating stomach pain. He collapsed and eventually had to have a liver transplant.

He said: "I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I'm still alive.

"But actually - if you lose your liver you lose your life."

Peter now struggles with simple undemanding tasks and suffers from constant fatigue, nerve pain, high blood pressure and depression.

He believes the "British epidemic" is leading thousands of young people down the same road.

"People have to listen to the stories of people like me," he said.

"We now have young people who are wrecking their lives. This is not about me telling others not to drink. It's about asking them to hear me and to plead with them not to end up like me."

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Alcohol-related deaths have almost trebled over the last 25 years

Alcohol-related deaths have almost trebled over the last 25 years, according to new research. Skip related content
Related photos / videosCalls for minimum alcohol price limits Play video Darts legend Andy Fordham says alcohol nearly ... Play video Calls for minimum alcohol price limits Play video Drink deaths 'have trebled in 25 years' A study carried out by the University of the West of England for Alcohol Concern suggests that 90,800 people will die from drinking too much in the next ten years if current consumption levels continue.
The charity said alcohol-related deaths went from 3,054 in 1984 to 8,999 in 2008.Alcohol Concern Chief Executive Don Shenker said: "Whilst there has been a small reduction in consumption and mortality over the last two years, the overall trend is a rise in consumption and a trebling of deaths since 1984."This rise runs in parallel with the growing affordability of alcohol. Without policies which more effectively target the cheap price of alcohol we will not get to grips with what has become one of the country's biggest public health problems."Brigid Simmonds, Chief Executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: "Alcohol policies designed to reduce drinking in the whole population are misguided. Controls on the total amount we drink will not work. What we need is a new debate about effective policy measures that are clearly targeted at the minority who misuse alcohol."

England is one of the heaviest drinking countries in Europe, with more than a third of men and a fifth of women exceeding Government limits, Alcohol Concern said.

In 2006 to 2007, the estimated cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS was £2.7 billion, and the Government said last year that the total expense of harm caused by drink was around £17.7 to £25.1 billion per year.

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number of under-25s seeking treatment for dependency on cocaine is rising significantly

The trends are revealed in a previously unpublished analysis by the NHS's National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) of data on addicts in England who receive treatment for their drug habit. The agency believes that the statistics "herald a generational shift in patterns of drug dependence in England".young adults with a drug problem are using heroin and crack – the two substances most likely to cause addiction, increase crime and pose serious health risks – but the number of under-25s seeking treatment for dependency on cocaine is rising significantly, official figures show.NTA data passed to the Guardian shows that the number of 18- to 24-year-olds newly presenting for treatment for heroin or crack fell by 22% from 12,320 in 2005-06 to 9,632 in 2007-08, even though drug treatment was more readily available than ever. However, the number of over-35s seeking treatment for the first time rose by 11%, from 20,465 in 2005-06 to 22,770 two years later.Over the same period, the number of young adults seeking help from a drug treatment service for cocaine problems rose from 1,591 to 2,692 – a rise of 69%.Overall, the number of young adults seeking help for misuse of heroin, crack or powder cocaine fell from about 14,000 in 2005 to about 12,000 in 2008 – evidence of another encouraging trend.
The NTA's annual report, to be published on Thursday, is expected to confirm that both the shift away from heroin and crack and the growing problem of cocaine addiction in under-25s continued in 2008-09.Paul Hayes, the NTA's chief executive, said: "It is reassuring that younger people seem to be turning away from heroin and crack. The quite significant reduction in the numbers of people seeking help [for those drugs] probably illustrates an actual fall in problematic use because help has never been more available."Fewer people using heroin is good news as heroin is the most dangerous of all the drugs that people use. Given it involves a significant risk of overdose, HIV and hepatitis C, and is associated with acquisitive crime, I'm convinced that individuals, communities and wider society will benefit, especially the poorest communities, which heroin affects most."However, the increase in cocaine dependency among the same age group was "very significant" and worrying, added Hayes. "There's been an increase in cocaine use generally for a few years, especially in the younger age groups, and that's now being reflected in significant additional numbers being treated for cocaine. That's worrying because cocaine dependency can be associated with health damage, crime and problems in individuals, although it's not as problematic as heroin because it's not injected."Heroin became a major problem in Britain in the 1980s amid growing unemployment. Better economic circumstances in recent years may help to explain its declining popularity among younger drug users, said Hayes. In addition, he said, "people understand now what using hard drugs like heroin and crack leads to, whereas in the 1980s people weren't so aware of its consequences. It's lost a lot of its glamour. It's associated with losers rather than risk-takers. Heroin and crack are seen as dirty, nasty, horrible drugs, whereas cocaine can be seen by some people as an adjunct to the party lifestyle, in the same way that alcohol can be."The NTA's research tallies with growing evidence from frontline drug workers that younger users are increasingly using cocaine as part of a combination of illicit substances. "The emerging problems facing drug projects who run young people's services aren't [clients using] heroin and crack but strong alcohol, strong cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy – a different basket of drugs to the older generation," said Harry Shapiro, of Drugscope, which represents about 800 local drug agencies in the UK. Experts refer to this pattern of drug use as "the ACCE profile".
In all, 530 young adults aged 18-25 were referred to the Mosaic drug and alcohol service in Stockport in 2007-08. Of those, 193 were seeking treatment for cannabis, 175 for alcohol, 115 for cocaine and only 27 for heroin. A survey of men aged 19-25 in the town found that the drugs that most had tried were cannabis (64%), powder cocaine (33%) and ecstasy (32%). Cocaine's greater availability and ensuing cheaper price is believed to explain its popularity."It's good that fewer young people appear to be using heroin," said Shapiro. "But the fact that young people who have drug problems now increasingly have problems of cocaine, cannabis and alcohol addiction means that we still have a serious problem here. There's also a challenge in this for drug treatment services, which are very much geared up to the needs of heroin users, and their ability to deal with a new generation of problem drug users who don't fit the traditional profile."Roger Howard, chief executive of the UK Drug Policy Commission thinktank, said: "There is a generational shift under way, with older, more chronic heroin users entrenched in heroin and a younger adult group who are much more into multi-drug use. It's worrying that we're seeing more people with multiple drug use because they are much more difficult to treat."The fact that cocaine users are usually better-off and less isolated from their families than heroin users may make them less likely to ask the UK's network of drug services for help, he added.

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Jamaica Transnational Crimes and Narcotics Division

Transnational Crimes and Narcotics Division is reporting that 53 people were arrested last month for ingesting and attempting to export drugs at the country’s two international airports. The number includes men and women. In addition the division says two persons died. One of the two died after ingesting marijuana while the other died after ingesting cocaine pellets. The Transnational Crimes and Narcotics division says a number of the people caught before September are now hospitalized after ingesting drug pellets which broke.

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Immunization with an experimental anti-cocaine vaccine resulted in a substantial reduction in cocaine use

Immunization with an experimental anti-cocaine vaccine resulted in a substantial reduction in cocaine use in 38 percent of vaccinated patients in a clinical trial supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health. The study, published in the October issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, is the first successful, placebo-controlled demonstration of a vaccine against an illicit drug of abuse."The results of this study represent a promising step toward an effective medical treatment for cocaine addiction," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow. "Provided that larger follow-up studies confirm its safety and efficacy, this vaccine would offer a valuable new approach to treating cocaine addiction, for which no FDA-approved medication is currently available."Like vaccines against infectious diseases such as measles and influenza, the anti-cocaine vaccine stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies. Unlike antibodies against infectious diseases, which destroy or deactivate the disease-causing agents, anti-cocaine antibodies attach themselves to cocaine molecules in the blood, preventing them from passing through the blood-brain barrier. By preventing the drug's entry into the brain, the vaccine inhibits or blocks the cocaine-induced euphoria.This study included 115 patients from a methadone maintenance program who were randomly assigned to receive the anti-cocaine vaccine or a placebo (inactive) vaccine. Participants were recruited from a methadone maintenance program because their retention rates are substantially better than programs focused primarily on treatment for cocaine abuse. Participants in both groups received five vaccinations over a 12-week period and were followed for an additional 12 weeks. All participants also took part in weekly relapse-prevention therapy sessions with a trained substance abuse counselor, had their blood tested for antibodies to cocaine, and had their urine tested three times a week for the presence of opioids and cocaine.Participants differed in the levels of antibodies generated in response to vaccination. Thirty-eight percent attained blood levels of anti-cocaine antibodies thought to be sufficient to block cocaine's euphoric effects. During weeks 9 to 16 (when antibody levels peaked), these participants had significantly more cocaine-free urines than those who received the placebo or those with active vaccine but low levels of anti-cocaine antibodies. Participants with the highest antibody levels had the greatest reductions in cocaine use. No serious adverse effects were associated with vaccine treatment."Fifty-three percent of participants in the high-antibody group were abstinent from cocaine more than half the time during weeks 8 to 20, compared with only 23 percent of participants with lower levels of antibodies," said Thomas Kosten, M.D., of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the study's principal investigator.
"In this study immunization did not achieve complete abstinence from cocaine use," added Dr. Kosten. "Previous research has shown, however, that a reduction in use is associated with a significant improvement in cocaine abusers' social functioning and thus is therapeutically meaningful."Dr. Kosten led the study in collaboration with colleagues from Yale University School of Medicine, the Connecticut Veterans Administration (VA) Healthcare System, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center.

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