7a Vested Interests Seeking Control

C.E.P.T.A.

The CAMPAIGN for EFFECTIVE PREVENTION and TREATMENT of ADDICTION.

7a. If you believe we need policies & practices which prevent and eradicate addictive drug use, beware of the destructively inappropriate deliberations of certain Home Office appointed organisations officially known as:

‘Statutory Independent Advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies’

(Which translates as: “powerful vested interests seeking to control government decision-making”.)

Whilst there are very few people today who need telling that Drink and Drugs breed Addiction, Crime and Violence, nearly everyone still seeks to know how the explosive growth of drugs, crime and violence can be halted and then reduced.

Experience here and abroad shows that the three factors most likely to reverse our constantly worsening drugs scene are:

1) Truly Effective Prevention,

2) The Training of Addicts to Rehabilitate Themselves (because we now

know that ONLY the addict can fully cure him or her self), and,

3) Culture Change.

In a society controlled – as ours is - by powerful and entrenched vested interests, ‘Culture Change’ is vital to our ability to progress Effective Prevention and the Training of Addicts in Self-Cure. This is because only change can loosen the continuing psycho-pharmaceutical hold on our country’s official policies and ‘treatments’. A stranglehold which, whilst deliberately keeping out other more effective solutions, maintains the present escalating usage of drugs of all types – illicit, legal and prescription – by covertly and openly manipulating drug policies.

Over the last 50 years of ineffective drug treatment (via their counselling sessions, ‘advice’ centres, clinics & pharmacies, etc.,) psychiatrists and their pharmaceutical suppliers have been in near exclusive contact with - and control of - the addicts and other users, who in fact form the consumer demand side of our drugs marketplace.

But to maintain the demand for the so-called ‘treatment’ which creates psycho-pharmaceutical income and their rising profits, decades of statistics show that the last thing which that fraternity does, or wants to do, is reduce drugs demand by curing the addicts and drug users UPON WHOM THEY DEPEND FOR THAT BUSINESS – nor do they want anyone else curing them.

In addition, by working towards legalisation which (because it increases the number of users) always boosts drug use, they are trying to enlarge the size of their market - payment for the supply of which they hope will continue to come from the U.K. taxpayer (because the suppliers know that addicts can’t pay).

As a result, amongst the most profitable activities in the ‘drug treatment’ field are:

1) psychiatric advice, counselling, drug prescribing, therapy & interventions

based on lifelong ‘habit management’, plus,

2) producing and selling pharmaceutical prescription drugs in order avowedly to

‘manage’ (not ‘cure’) lifelong drug dependency.

In addition to creating a huge market for pharmaceutical prescription drugs by encouraging the D.O.H. to purchase bulk supplies to give away to addicts, psychiatrists also turn active healthy school-children onto Ritalin, Prozac and other habit-forming prescription drugs at taxpayer expense, Furthermore, their ‘advice’ increasingly circulates in our schools, promoting so-called ‘harm reduction’, ‘informed choice (of drugs)’, ‘responsible use (of drugs)’ and even ‘safe use (of drugs)’, concepts which – masquerading as ‘drugs education’ – are now becoming a major factor helping create use of drugs (i.e. demand) amongst our youth.

With half a century of increasingly damning evidence against psycho-pharmaceutical policies and totally ineffective treatments, one might logically expect that the last people the U.K. government would want to have advising them on anti-drug use policies and practices would be the same failing psychiatrists, pharmacological academics and pharmaceutical experts.

Unfortunately, there is nothing logical about the membership of The Advisory Council for Misuse of Drugs, appointed by the Home Office to advise that Office on anti-drug use policies – the very same Advisory Public Body which recom-mended that Home Secretary David Blunkett should re-classify cannabis, which advice he took. Now however, the present Home Secretary, having recognised the flaws in that advice and in that decision, is fortunately on the verge of again re-classifying cannabis for the dangerous substance it is and always has been.

However, we are going to go on having ineffective anti-drug policies and stealthy liberalisation for as long as an advisory body like the ACMD can be controlled by commercial interests and thus directed along policy lines which have the aimed for side effect of increasing psycho-pharmaceutical business turnover and profit.

Let us therefore investigate membership of that independent public body which, by definition, one would expect would not include those already in public service, especially as this gives them two forums through which to influence government.

The ACMD is described as a Statutory and Independent Advisory “Non-Departmental Public Body” with not less than 20 members appointed by the Secretary of State at the Home Office. Those twenty must include representatives of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and people with a wide experience of social “problems” connected with the misuse of drugs. (There is no requirement for those skilled in “solutions”.

However, examination of the Council’s composition shows that in practice, the H.O. appointment criteria boil down to a membership based on a preponderance of qualifications in psychiatry, psychology, pharmaceuticals and other chemistry – i.e. all part of the failing anti-drug fraternity of the last 50 years. So, who was it who framed the criteria for the Council’s composition and for what purpose?

On the other hand, with 16 other Council members one would expect also to see biologists, neurologists and toxicologists, and particularly representatives both: i) from national organisations successful in preventing the onset of drug use and, ii) from UK and international organisations with a proven record of successfully recovering individuals from drug misuse and addiction.

But this is just not the case.

1) Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, (pharmacologist, academic & legaliser) is a Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Newcastle University and is the former and current ACMD Chairman who, at the time of the re-classification of cannabis, advised the government that there was little evidence of a causal link between cannabis and schizophrenia and who attested that evidence linking cannabis to mental illness was known and had been taken account of. This was later demonstrated by Professor Robin Murray and others to have been untrue, and so called into question the integrity of Rawlins and indeed the ACMD.

It is significant that Rawlins and Professor Leslie Iverson another pharmacological member of the ACMD joined Mike Trace (the disgraced former Deputy Drugs Czar and former NTA Director long suspected of covert pharmaceutical links) on the rostrum of an April 2004 Camden conference to defend the ACMD’s earlier discredited advice to the Home Office.

Trace, whilst serving in high profile positions where his duty was to condemn drug usage and attack legalisation of all types, was for years a covert legaliser and now openly continues to spread that message in company with a variety of psych and pharma fellow travellers.

2) Reverend Martin Blakebrough, (liberaliser & academic) CEO of Kaleidoscope a pro-liberalisation drugs charity. Earlier patron of ‘The Alliance’, which campaigns for bigger and more frequent doses of methadone at taxpayer expense, and supporter of the U.K. Harm Reduction Alliance, which promotes education of schoolchildren in drug choices and qualified drug-use.

He supported the recent re-classification of cannabis and apparently continues to do so even in face of the new evidence tying it to psychosis and schizophrenia.

3) Vivienne Evans, (lobbyist) C.E.O. ADFAM, and formerly Head of Prevention and Education at DrugScope where she is still a Trustee and Member of the DrugScope Board.

4) Dr Laurence Gruer, (psychiatrist) Scottish Public Health Service, was responsible with assistance from pharma contacts for developing the government funded needle and syringe exchange programmes and methadone programme in Glasgow (also taxpayer funded). A harm reduction proponent, a Member of the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse and a former chair of the ACMD committee looking at the impact of parental drug use on children (Hidden Harm), he exerts influence over Scottish and U.K. policies both as a civil servant and as a member of the ACMD Non-Departmental Public Body.

5) Paul Hayes, (civil servant) C.E.O of the National Treatment Agency, and essentially put in place by DrugScope. Served for 20 years in the probation service. Is a known liberaliser, actively supports ‘The Alliance’ (free methadone) and influences government policy via both the NHS and the Home Office.

6) Russell Hayton, (lobbyist) a member of ‘Action on Hepatitis C’, and a harm reduction supporter, he serves as Clinical Nurse Specialist and Services Governance Manager at Plymouth Drug & Alcohol Action Team.

7) Alan Hunter, (pharmaceutical lobbyist) Director of the Law Regulatory and Intellectual Property, and Secretary to The Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, whose work and position he is obviously there to support and promote.

8) Professor David Nutt, (psychiatrist and pharmacologist, academic & lobbyist) is the Director of the Psychopharmacology Unit at Bristol University. A former member of the pro-liberalisation lobby group known as the ‘Police Foundation’ (not to be confused with the ‘Police Federation’ comprised of actual police members) and a professed harm reductionist and legaliser.

In evidence to the 2001 Home Affairs Select Committee he gave ambiguous and even opposing statements regarding the effects of cannabis on schizophrenia, finally advising that it was not a major health problem – a conclusion now contradicted by Professor Robin Murray’s more recent and damning work. Nutt considers ecstasy to be relatively safe in the short term and continues to support the use of cannabis.

9) Mrs Kay Roberts, (pharmacist & lobbyist) was formerly the Co-ordinator for the Greater Glasgow Pharmacy Needle Exchange Scheme and was on the steering committee for the U.K. Harm Reduction Alliance – the pro-liberalisation lobby group. She advocates the decriminalisation of cannabis.

10) Dr Roy Robertson GP, (lobbyist) is a member of ‘The Methadone Alliance’, ‘Action on Hepatitis C’ and is on the Directors Committee of UKHRA.

11) Dr Dima Abdulramin, (psychiatrist) is the Briefing Manager of the National Treatment Agency, an NHS Department, which enjoys an incestuous relationship with DrugScope, the psych run National Addiction Institute, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and large sections of the pharmaceutical industry.

12) Lord Victor Adebowale, (legaliser) is the Chief Executive of Turning Point, the pro-liberalisation drug treatment charity. When the new Home Secretary Charles Clarke asked the ACMD to rethink the classification of cannabis in light of Professor Robin Murray’s and other new research evidence linking cannabis to psychosis and schizophrenia, Lord Adebowale dismissed the idea of having another look at further re-classification as ‘pandering to bias from the media’. He said that any decision must be based on clear hard facts – not conjecture. An amazing comment in light of the fact that the Advisory Council on which he serves is itself trying to reject the ‘clear hard facts’ of Professor Murray and other researchers and to continue on the same basis of bias and conjecture which led to the last erroneous re-classification.

13) Martin Barnes, (liberaliser) current Chief Executive of DrugScope, the fore-most liberalisation pressure group in Britain. A law graduate, he was appointed in January 2004 with no previous experience in the drugs field. Nevertheless, DrugScope continues to hold itself out to government, the media and others as the U.K’s experts on drug treatments and policies. From whom do they get their data?

14) Dr Margaret Birtwistle, (psychologist & academic) specialist G.P. Senior Tutor in the Department of Addiction and Psychological Medicine, at St George’s Hospital Medical School, and examiner in forensic medicine.

15) Dr Cecilia Bottomley, (junior doctor) specialist Registrar in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and daughter of Peter Bottomley, MP and Lady Virginia Bottomley.

16) Ms Carmel Clancy, (psychiatrist & academic) Principle lecturer in Mental Health and Addictions at Middlesex University. Co-authored the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit information manual entitled: “Co-existing Problems of Mental Disorder and Substance Abuse (Dual Diagnosis)”.

This was the infamous and brazen, tongue-in-cheek attempt to claim the drug rehabilitation field solely for psychiatry by pretending that ‘mental problems’ are the basic cause of drug habituation and addiction. So it therefore comes as no surprise to find that this is a divisive main plank in the pharmaceutical industry’s ‘marketing’ to politicians of drugs like methadone and buprenorphine.

The truth of course is that it is use of drugs (including prescription drugs) which creates deteriorating mental conditions – which is why Professor Murray’s findings are resisted by the psycho-pharms.

17) Professor Ilana Crome, (psychiatrist & academic) is Professor of Addiction Psychiatry at Keele University Medical School, Haplands Hospital, and was co-author with Carmel Clancy of the notorious ‘Dual Diagnosis’ Information Manual which set out to define and capture the drug rehabilitation field as the exclusive domain of the psychiatric industry and thus as a guaranteed marketplace for pharmaceutical prescription drugs.

18) Ms Robyn Doran, (mental health nurse) is a New Zealander qualified in Change Agent Skills, is an NHS Director, is Service Director Substance Misuse at the CNWL Mental Health trust, and served as Advisor on Human Resources to the Millivres Prowler Group – one of the world’s biggest and longest established Gay / Lesbian businesses – largely publishing.

19) Dianne Draper, (civil servant) Public Health Policy Support Officer, Government Offices, Humberside and Yorkshires. Formerly Young People’s Substance Misuse Commissioner with Bradford Social Services.

20) Councillor Robert Eschle, (academic) teacher and magistrate, Essex CC.

21) Emeritus Professor Hugh Edmondson, (academic) facial surgery consultant.

22) Emeritus Professor C Robin Ganellin, (academic) Medical Chemistry UCL.

23) Dr Clare Gerada (medical doctor) GP (London) Primary Care Lead for Drug Misuse and Chair at the Royal College of GPs. Collaborated with Dr Hans- Christian Raabe (Coalition Against Cannabis) on articles about cannabis, and spoke against the legalisation of cannabis in Palace of Westminster meetings. A former DrugScope Trustee, she recently published a book on ‘Drug Misuse for the GP’ for the Royal College of General Practitioners.

24) Andy Hayman, (Senior Police Officer) in evidence given to the Home Affairs Select Committee which investigated the classification of cannabis, he said that the Association of Chief Police Officers was “quite relaxed about cannabis re-classification”. Obviously this would be the case because the proposed downgrading to class ‘C’ was mainly instigated in order to lighten the load on police officers. Whether that has been achieved is still far from being proven, and it is since that ACPO relaxed attitude was expressed that the increased mental health dangers of cannabis use have been discovered and revealed.

25) Caroline Healy JP, Health Advisor to Sure-Start London. Has been a hospital nurse, midwife, health visitor and a Heath Service Manager

26) Dr Matthew Hickman, (academic) Senior Lecturer in Public Health, Imperial College & Deputy Director Centre for Research on Drugs. Although it is extremely difficult to find a heroin or crack cocaine user who did not first use cannabis, Hickman disagrees with the long standing Gateway Theory which holds that cannabis leads to the use of other drugs. Considers that cannabis should be ‘separated’ from other drugs and accompanied by ‘health education’.

27) Professor Leslie Iverson, (pharmacologist & academic) like all those with ties to the pharmaceutical industry is a pro-legaliser. Ignoring well documented evidence of deaths amongst cannabis users from cancers of the throat, lungs and other organs - because these do not cause immediate death - he told the Beckley Foundation at the Royal Society that there have been no deaths from cannabis use. This also ignored fatal accidents at work and on the road caused by cannabis using drivers and machine operators, etc. Claims cannabis should be legalised rather than just decriminalised as – contrary to vast medical evidence - he holds it to be less dangerous than the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco. Has not said whether cannabis should be sold by the pharmaceutical or tobacco industries or indicated how if legalised it would be kept out of the teenage market.

28) His Honour Judge Thomas Joseph, Resident Judge, Croydon Crown Court.

29) Dr John Marsden, (psychologist & academic) is a research psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Addictive Behaviour at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. A former member of the central management team at Turning Point the pro-legalisation charity, and regional editor Europe, Africa and Asia for the journal “Addiction”, he has also acted as consultant to the W.H.O and the U.N. Drugs Control Programme.

30) Peter Martin, (lobbyist) Chief Executive ADDACTION a drug ‘treatment’ charity which pushes cannabis risk reduction advice rather than real prevention.

31) Dr Richard Pates, (psychologist) is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Director of the Community Addiction Unit in Cardiff. He specialises in the treatment of amphetamines and aspects of injecting.

32) Trevor Pearce, (criminologist) acting Director-General of the National Crime Squad. Member of the Association of Chief Police Officers which opposes any further change in cannabis classification.

33) Dr Mary Rowlands, (psychiatrist) substance misuse and addictive behaviour.

34) Dr Polly Taylor, (veterinary surgeon) and consultant anaesthesiologist.

35) Ms Monique Tomlinson, (lobbyist) professes to be a “freelance consultant”, is a member of UKHRA, ‘Action on Hepatitis C’ and is a former deputy director of ‘Mainliners’ the pressure group for the interests of drug users. A liberaliser whose employers are not known.

36) Arthur Wing, (probation officer) Assistant Chief, Sussex Area.

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This then is the ‘Advisory Council for Misuse of Drugs’, described as an “Independent Non-Departmental Public Body” with not less than 20 members to be appointed by the Home Office Secretary of State.

But can it be considered as truly ‘non-departmental’ with 19 of its members doing work as civil / public servants for local or national government departments (DOH, DfES & the HO), and by virtue of the same employment circumstances of 53% of its membership, can it in fact be considered ‘independent’ of government.

It can be seen from the above that the criteria for the composition of the minimum 20 membership of the ACMD is clearly based on the biased and provenly false pre-supposition that only psychologists and the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries have any knowledge or understanding of the fields of drug misuse prevention and drug-use rehabilitation.

Ten members are psychologists or psychiatrists or are otherwise involved in the mental health arena, and six members are pharmacists or pharmacologists, thus ensuring that at least 42% of the membership is supportive of our status quo psycho-pharmaceutical drug treatment system which has done nothing for half a century except to escalate drug use of all types throughout the U.K., whilst continuing to receive more and more taxpayer funds from a baffled government.

Thirteen members (36%) are known or professed liberalisers or legalisers and roughly another half dozen (17%) are widely and strongly suspected of liberaliser / legaliser intentions – which puts a majority of the Council in agreement with psycho-pharmaceutical goals.

N.B. It should be noted that legalisation puts all forms of drug sales – including those currently illegal - into the hands of the psycho-pharmaceutical fraternity, and development of legal sales by prescription is of course the currently fastest expanding market sector. Then there are also so-called “no prescription required” prescription drug sales over the internet – all totally legal the way they have it set up – but totally damaging to our population.

Another scan of the membership reveals that some 12 members (one-third) are academics, which would be acceptable if another one-third were practical down to earth providers of effective prevention and lifelong cures of addiction. But try as one might, whilst there is mention of treatment providers on the ACMD, there is no evidence that any of the membership is actually running successful prevention training or helping existing addicts to achieve comfortable abstinence for life - and no evidence that they even know how to.

Where is there mention of the NDPA, the UK’s longest established and most successful real prevention organisation? Where are representatives from ISAAC, Narconon, Narcotics Anonymous, Maranatha Community, the Police Federation, Yeldall CDRC, all of them organisations which do help addicts cure themselves?

Of the 6 psychiatrists listed, every one of them is a specialist in addiction, which seems to mean that they know a lot about addictive ‘behaviour’ but offer no form of effective prevention and no means of helping addicts to a lifelong cure. So where are the practical ‘hands-on’ psychiatrists, toxicologists and research scientists like Professor Robin Murray, Professor Heather Ashton, Professor John Henry, Professor Hamid Ghodse and Dr Louise Arsenault?

And what about the eight (22%) known supporters of harm reduction and UKHRA. Bearing in mind that harm reduction is based on the fatalistic and totally disproven idea that drug use by the vast majority of our population is inevitable and on the equally disproven pharmacologically generated idea that drug addiction cannot be cured, a large majority of the rest of the Council are certainly hidden harm reductionists because they are trapped into it by their belief in the bogus inevitability of more users, and their false belief that there is no cure.

When one examines ACMD membership one realises that, if the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries had met together to form a committee for the protection of their monopoly of state provided drugs education and treatment of addiction (and we’re not suggesting that they didn’t meet), then the composition of the ACMD would certainly match psycho-pharm marketing and P.R. requirements.

In forming this Council the Government had the commendable intention of seeking advice from non-governmental drug misuse specialists for the specific purpose of reducing addictive drug consumption.

But unfortunately amongst the governmental civil service anti-drug specialists who helped form the ACMD are also supporters of the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.

In fact, examination of the overwhelming bias in the composition of the council’s membership leads to a recognition that the government cannot possibly expect ever to receive impartial advice from this Home Office sponsored group of so-called drug misuse experts.

The fact that ACMD membership has been high-jacked by those commercial organisations with the most interest in seeing addictive drug sales expanded by legalisation and other means, must now be recognised and changes made in the Council’s composition to permit provenly successful individuals from non- psycho-pharmaceutical prevention and rehabilitation fields to be members.

Drug companies cannot make money from an individual who will never use drugs and cannot profit from an abstinent former drug user, as a result of which (contrary to massive proof) the psycho-pharmaceutical industry pretends that drug addiction is not only inevitable, but also pretends it is an incurable condition and is also a mental illness – again contrary to the truth.

To sell these false concepts, continuous manipulation of numerous politicians, civil servants, the media, the government and the public is essential on a 24 hour seven days a week basis. That manipulation comes in a variety of guises, the most favoured by far being that which does not appear to be directly under the control or guidance of the psychiatric or pharmaceutical industries.

In the May 17^th edition of THE TIMES, under the heading of “Editor says drug firms ‘use’ medical journals”, Nigel Hawkes reported as follows:

“MEDICAL journals act as a marketing device for drug companies, and profit hugely by it, a long term editor of the British Medical Journal has charged. Richard Smith (former BMJ Editor) says that the studies funded by drug companies are carefully planned to produce positive results.

This can be done, he argues, by asking the right questions, using multiple endpoints (outcome measures) and selecting the ones that show the product in the best light, and by publishing trials again and again, in different journals, by different sub-group analysts, and in different geographic regions, to give the impression of a huge weight of evidence.

The trials are well conducted, he acknowledges, but adds “studies funded by a company were four times more likely to have results favourable to the company than studies funded from other sources.”

The companies will often order huge numbers of reprints, worth possibly more than £500,000, to the journal publisher, for distribution to doctors.”

Journals and other publications can include DrugLink, DDN, Addiction, NTORS, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and others.

Front groups include DrugScope, ADFAM, Campaign to Legalise Cannabis, Cannabis-Hemp Info Club, Centre for Research in Drug and Health Related Behaviour, Drug Education Practitioners Forum, Forward Thinking on Drugs, Kaleidoscope, the Roehampton Institute, the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, RELEASE, The Alliance (formerly The Methadone Alliance), the Police Foundation (non police PR front for legalisers and harm reductionists), the U.K. Harm Reduction Alliance, Transform, Turning Point, the NCB, the Centre for Reform and others. Supporters and sponsors include the National Treatment Agency, the National Addiction Centre, the ACMD and of course ‘in the background’ pharmaceutically related companies.

Whilst it is generally believed that it is drug-users who campaign for legalisation of drugs, hands-on observers in the field seldom find this to be so. The huge professional lobby pushing so hard and via so many different routes to legalise drugs is not in fact capable of being run or financed by that lethargic, dis-organised and penniless minority of ‘stoned’ citizens who daily use illegal drugs and / or prescribed methadone. Sponsors are needed to promote and finance “user” organisations like ‘The Alliance’ which mounts large conferences that could never have taken place without the support of the NTA, background pharmaceutical companies and the psychiatrists which help organise such events.

This then is the playing field onto which the ACMD steps as a semi-official referee called upon by the Secretary of State to frame and advise upon the rules of engagement between the various and opposing opinions in the anti-drug league.

But the long entrenched mainly hidden psycho-pharmaceutical commercial interests have been crafty and cagily self-protective. They already control and virtually own the referee to ensure that the play and the results go only one way.

As a result the Home Secretary and his staff must remove their psycho-pharm created blindfolds by being prepared to talk to those people and organisations in the anti-drugs field with whom they have had little or no previous contact. These are the individuals and groups which have been sidelined or marginalised by DrugScope, the NTA, the Police Foundation, UKHRA and other psycho-pharm fellow-travellers.

In fact the Home Secretary should especially seek to listen to those his Office has been cautioned against by any member of the psychiatric, pharmaceutical, chemical or pharmacological industries.

This is because condemnation of any person or group by the psycho-pharms is a near certain indication that that person or group has an answer the psycho-pharms do not want the government to hear.

Namely that experimenting with and starting to use drugs can be PREVENTED, and that existing drug addicts can for themselves achieve COMFORTABLE ABSTINENCE FOR LIFE – given the right training in a workable system.

E. Kenneth Eckersley, FCMI, FIOD, HonMPHMA(Int), HSDC, MCIM, MFDAP,

Former Magistrate & Retired Justice of the Peace.

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