Drugs: Dilemmas and Choices
By a Working Party of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians
The 'drug problem' is getting
steadily worse. Convictions for drug offences, number of known
addicts and Customs seizures have been rising inexorably for 40
years. So has the number of young people using illegal drugs.
Similar changes are occuring in
other countries and the vast international drug trade defies all
attempts to suppress it. Yet, remarkably, there is almost no public
discussion of current control policies.
This book, written by a
multi-disciplinary group of experts, aims to stimulate an informed
debate about the possible alternatives to these unsuccessful
policies. It describes the historical reason why alcohol and
tobacco are legal while heroin and amphetamine are not. It
discusses the reasons why people use drugs, the consequences of
their doing so and the benefits and limitation of treatment. The
authors investigate the lessons to be learnt from previous attempts
to curb drug and alcohol use, how the 1.4 billion pounds that the
UK Government currently devotes to drug control might be better
spent in future, and what would be likely to happen if cannabis, or
even heroin, were to be 'legalised'.
There are no easy answers. Read this
book and draw your own conclusions.
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. The main
drugs
Chapter 2. Drugs
and society – the historical background
Chapter 3. The rise
of drug use in the UK
Chapter 4. The
complex causes of drug use
Chapter 5.
Consequences of drug use – for the individual and society
Chapter 6. The
international drugs trade
Chapter 7. Policies
for prevention and control
Chapter 8.
Treatment of drug misuse
Chapter 9. Lessons
from history
Chapter 10. The key
issues
Glossary
References
Appendix I. Working
Party Membership
Appendix II. Expert
witnesses who gave evidence to the Working Party
Index