LONDON - March 8 - An expert panel called for a complete overhaul of British drug laws in a report released today, blasting Britain's Misuse of Drugs Act -- which is similar in many ways to the Controlled Substances Act in the United States -- as so unscientific and unrealistic that it should be scrapped entirely.

The 335-page report was the result of two years of deliberations by a panel of experts and laypeople convened by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA). U.S. drug policy reformers urged that similar discussions -- focused on basing laws on science rather than myth and emotion -- begin immediately in the U.S. The RSA report stated:

• The idea of a drug-free society is an illusion. "The main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harms that drugs cause. ... [A]ny approach that has total prohibition as its principal objective is bound to fail."

• A new drug law should focus on restricting behaviors that cause harm, based on objective scientific evaluation of the harms of various substances, including legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
  
• Marijuana (cannabis) "should continue to be controlled. But its position on the harms index several places below alcohol or tobacco suggests that the form this control takes might have to correspond far more closely with the way in which alcohol and tobacco are regulated."

• "U.S. drug laws are more unscientific and irrational than Britain's, so U.S. policymakers should be clamoring even more vigorously and loudly for fundamental changes in our drug laws than British policymakers are," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "If our marijuana laws were based on science rather than myths, we wouldn't arrest nearly 800,000 Americans each year for a drug that's safer than tobacco or alcohol."

  The full report is available at www.theRSA.org or www.RSAdrugscommission.org.

With more than 21,000 members and 100,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit www.MarijuanaPolicy.org. 

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