UK 2-year Study calls for Harm Reduction, Not Demonization

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA, commission on illegal drugs judged that together with alcohol and tobacco other drugs should be dealt with in public policy as a "matter of health, not just crime."

A Press Association report carried by the Guardian, pulled out these excerpts from the report released March 9:

"The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others. They are able, in that sense, to 'manage' their drug use ... The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common," it said.

(The report's statement of the obvious is likely to be controversial, the Guardian wrote.)

"Drugs policy should, like our policy on alcohol and tobacco, seek to regulate use and prevent harm rather than to prohibit use altogether," the report concludes.