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Welcome to the third edition of Release's newsletter, which covers Release's 40th anniversary; an update on our forthcoming June conference; commentary on the ongoing cannabis debate; refelection on the increasing UK prison population; some legal updates; analysis of the UN position in 2007 as well as information on our core work on the helplines.
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Release 40th anniversary conference 2007This yearís conference, alongside its showcasing of a range of significant commentators in the contemporary drugs field, celebrates Releaseís fortieth birthday. Accordingly, it will be a special event, with some very special contributors. With drugs and civil liberties forming the overarching theme, speakers will include Helena Kennedy QC, Simon Hughes MP, Lord David Ramsbotham, Simon Jenkins, Ethan Nadelmann and many others. The day will also feature Releaseís founder Caroline Coon, speaking for the organisationís continued relevance in todayís Britain. We will explore topical themes such as the place of drug treatment in prisons; women, drugs and the law; the epidemic of Hepatitis C; the medicinal use of cannabis; the influence of the tabloid press on drug policy, and a number other issues, all of them within the context of security concernsógrand and global or small and localó threatening to overwhelm those of civil rights and human freedom. To ensure your place click here to see full programme and booking details. ìWhat price justice?î ñ reduced legal services for the vulnerableRelease has long advocated the importance of legal services as a part of harm reduction for problematic drug users. In a wider context, we firmly believe that the UK legal system should be working towards greater access to justice for all ñ regardless of social or economic status. Instead, recent developments in public funding for both civil and criminal legal services mean that access to justice is becoming seriously compromised for the poorest and most vulnerable in UK society. This led last month to a street protest by solicitors, co-ordinated by the What Price Justice? Campaign, and a number of legal aid providers have since refused to sign up to a new fixed fee system for civil work that they believe will drive many firms out of business. According to the solicitorsí professional body The Law Society, if implemented, the government's plans to reform legal aid could lead to hundreds of legal aid practitioners giving up legal aid work - leaving many vulnerable clients unrepresented. The What Price Justice? campaign's objective is to persuade the government to guarantee an adequately funded legal aid system ensuring quality representation and access to justice for all. If you would like to support the campaign, visit The Law Society Release seeks support from Drug Action TeamsThe unique Release helpline has been running for 40 years and is needed now more than ever. We receive about 1,000 enquiries a month from drug users and professionals alike all over the country. In addition to legal expertise, we offer expert advice and support from dedicated drug treatment professionals. With problems ranging from school exclusion to drug testing at work, drug offence arrests to problems accessing treatment, many of our callers tell us they didn't know where else to turn. While claiming to recognise the value of our service, the government withdrew funding for the helpline last year after 20 years of support. Apparently there is no longer any "mechanism" to allow central funding for national organisations such as Release. So, this month we have gone to the drugs field seeking support. We have written to every Drug (and Alcohol) Action Team Co-ordinator in the country seeking financial support for the Release helpline. We have had a small number of positive responses - and hard cash - from DATs across the country who recognise the valuable service we provide to drug users and professionals in their area. Without this support, it would be hard for our much needed helpline to stay open. A number of DATs have told us that, while they would like to help, cuts to their own budgets mean they cannot even fund some local services. We asked delegates at the recent National Drug Treatment Conference - ranging from GPs to drug treatment workers to commissioners - to sign a petition stating their belief that the UK still needs Release and that the government should support this unique organisation. Nearly every delegate put their name to this campaign. There are many DATs (and DAATs) we have yet to hear from. If you are from one of these and would like to help, please contact Katy Swaine or by telephone on 020 7749 4036.
40 years of ReleaseRelease celebrates its fortieth birthday this year. Born out of the counter-culture of 1960s London, Release is now the oldest independent drugs charity in the world. Attaining to this venerable status has taken the organisation up a steep learning curve, and the Release of today is a rather different animal from the one that grew up around a single telephone in Caroline Coonís basement flat. We have had to adapt to a changing social and political landscape. 
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What has remained constant, however, is the core vision that pervaded Release when it represented the flowering of the 60s counter-culture: a flexible and pragmatic approach to helping individuals in their dealings with powerful institutions, and a commitment to speak the truth to those in authority, however uncomfortable that truth might make them. Legal updateA quick run down of some recent legal developmentsÖ
Crystal meth became a Class A drug on 18 January 2007, now carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for supply or production. Follow up assessments came into practice across the country as the Drug Intervention Programmeís Tough Choices project gradually comes into force. Failure to attend an assessment is a criminal offence. New guidance on policing cannabis was published in January 2007, clarifying and formalising the use of cannabis warnings for simple possession. See the Release news page for further details.
Afghanistan updateIn a newsletter about a year ago we expressed concern at the governmentís decision to send British troops to Afghanistan to tackle the opium problem. We were concerned that it would make no difference to the availability of heroin while putting our troops at considerable risk. Less than a year later, we hear that Tony Blair has agreed to consider whether it may be possible instead to divert the raw product grown in fields throughout Afghanistan to legal outlets. Campaigners, including Release, have been suggesting such a change in policy for some time. Using the opium in this way could alleviate a worldwide shortage of medicinal opiates. Ministers have recently admitted that the NHS is running short of diamorphine and codeine. We hope that results from a proposed pilot project to allow some farmers to produce and sell their crops legally to drugs companies are looked at very carefully. UK PrisonsDespite the now familiar political promise of reducing reliance on imprisonment, the UK prison population has almost doubled since 1993, from under 42,000 to a peak figure of approximately 80,000 in 2006. We send more people to prison than any other Western European country, yet it is widely recognized that imprisonment is highly ineffective in reducing crime. While violent offenders make up the single la rgest component of the UK gaol population, drug related offences come in secondó more than crimes against property. In reality prisons function as a dustbin into which the products of poverty, alienation and marginalization are swept. While less than 5% of the general population are classified as having two or more mental health problems, amongst sentenced prisoners the figure is vastly higher: 72% for male and 70% for female. We seem to have been much tougher on crime than on the causes of crimeÖ
Cannabis ñ in the news againÖThere has been a plethora of newspaper articles in recent weeks discussing cannabis and, in particular, skunk. It seems the media have gone skunk mad. Even the Independent on Sunday, after 10 years of advocating the decriminalisation of cannabis, has decided it was, in fact, so wrong that it has issued a public apology and dedicated its front page to the cannabis issue for the past two weeks. On 25 March the paper led with the headline ëThe Great Cannabis Debateí although it was hard to find any actual debate in the paper itself. Citing a record number of teenagers requiring drug treatment last year, the Independent seems to infer the existence of a causal link between cannabis use and the onset on psychotic illness. We would be more cautious about drawing such an apparently straightforward link. It appears indisputable that cannabis does have a detrimental effect on the mental health of a minority of individuals, with the risks appearing highest for young people, those who use cannabis heavily and those who suffer from ñ or have a vulnerability to ñ mental illness. However, most people who use cannabis will never experience mental health problems as a result. Few well controlled studies have been carried out into the links between cannabis and schizophrenia, and those that exist still fail to replicate findings. (For further information, please see our 2006 publication Cannabis in Depth. In view of the widespread use of cannabis, and the implications these findings have on general public health, better evidence is clearly needed. In other developmentsÖ The THC4MS campaigners, who were all convicted at Carlisle Crown Court on 15 December 2006 for supplying cannabis to Multiple Sclerosis sufferers throughout the UK, have also made the news. Lesley Gibson and her husband Michael had been supplying cannabis chocolate bars to MS sufferers with the assistance of Marcus Davies, who was convicted of conspiracy to supply. Lesley also suffers from MS and found that cannabis was highly effective in relieving pain and other symptoms. The Release 40th anniversary conference will be addressing this issue. In the USA medicinal cannabis is now readily available on prescription in eleven states. Allen St Pierre, Executive Director of NORML, will be discussing how cannabis is legally available as a medicine in the USA and asking why not in the UK. We are looking forward to debating this and many other issues on 18 June 2007.
UN moving the goalpostsIn the UN General Assembly Special Session of 1998 (UNGASS), which focused on drugs, the UN drug control system set a 10-year goal. Accompanied by ambitious TV advertising ó ìA Drug-Free world, we can do it!î ó the objective was defined as the elimination or significant reduction of drug production and trafficking. The session also called for a 10-year review of progress. This period is drawing to a close, and by any independent and realistic assessment their goals can hardly be said to have been met. Meanwhile, Mr Antonio Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has responded to this obstinate fact by moving the goalposts. He now seeks to have the progress measured in terms of the last century rather than the last ten years, an act of legerdemain that enables him to conclude that the drug control system and its prohibitionist strategies have been a great success. Where there is further room for improvement, he admonishes us all, is in the need to maintain a consistent anti-drug message, which will act as a ìsocial vaccineî. He is particularly stern in relation to the Western media over its circulation of stories about models with ìnotorious drug habitsî. One senses that there might be one in particular whom he would like to chastise personally..Ö Sadly, Costaís statements do not encourage us to expect 2008 to see an honest appraisal of the last 10 years, and sensible discussions on the way forward Release websiteThe Release website continues to see an increase in use - in March 2007 the site saw:
475,000 hits 7,500 visits
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