Some confused responses to say the least! The crime is caused by drugs being illegal - how many people mug somebody to buy cigarettes or have a drink? Many of the health problems area caused by drugs being illegal - overdoses, dirty needles, cut with substances that are toxic etc. All the violence and gun crime is caused by drugs being illegal. Terrorists use drug money to finance killing us. So legalise drugs and crime drops by 50% or more, and the Police have twice as much time to spend catching real criminals. Prison populations halve, terrorists can't buy guns and our liberty is increased. Spend a quarter of the money saved on rehab, education and enforcing laws on driving whilst high etc, selling to children, and we can all take a massive tax cut without the drug problem getting worse. Oh but of course, drugs are "bad" so it will never happen.

Tim, London,

The logic of their argument (as reported) is either that alcohol/nicotine be treated as for illegal drugs OR that illegal drugs be regulated in the same way as alcohol/nicotine with the social & legal controls that currently apply (drunkenness, vehicles etc.). Consequently they should be sold to identified adults by pharmacists.

This would be a perfectly reasonable arangement (provided that the social controls were actually enforced.)

After all, the great social evil that is illegal drugs is the vast amount of money involved in the supply chain. Take that away and most of the real problems, crime etc. will largely dissappear. You cannot isolate one or two illegal drugs for legalisation, it, logically, must be all of them. The attraction will probably be reduced if it is no longer illegal. The pharmacist's professional ethics will remove the hard sell so prevalent with a pusher's desire for an escalating long term customer base.

Brian Vallance, LEFKIMMI, Greece

About time some people started to think intelligently. OK, lie around all weekend taking the drug which you fancy, or really go to town and have a good mixture. Then off to work on Monday and find you've forgotten how to drive your car, and you hit a pedestrian and they die. Well, these things happen.

So you get on a train to go to work, and the driver has had a fantastic weekend of haze and misses seeing a stop signal and the train collides with another, lots of people die and many injured. Well, these things happen.

Perhaps you are about to fly off to a holiday destination and the pilot and aircrew also had a happy weekend and the pilot forgets he needs to reach a particular speed before the aircraft can take to the air. The aircraft just crashes into the gravel at the end of the runway, the wheels fly off but luckily nobody is killed but many are injured, shocked and panic struck. Well, these things can happen.

Not funny is it, and that could happen every day !!

Phil, Newport, England

The premise of this article is the same old dreary argument used for years and years that alcohol and tobacco are bad things but no worse than other drugs and as they're legal, others should be too. The fact that every passing year sees more and more legislation curbing the use of alcohol and tobacco, with the tax system, age limits, driving limits and attempts to make both socially unacceptable is alway ignored. Furthermore, those who seek to pin the blame for bad drugs and crime related to the sale of drugs firmly on the fact that they're prohibited and so are linked to crime seem to ignore the illegal production, importation and sale of a considerable amount of alcohol and tobacco. Finally, Alice's mention of the legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol companies as paragons of capitalism seems to ignore serious issues of monopolies, bad practise and misleading advertising attached to all three industries.

Philip Stobbart, London,

John of Lewes has new thinking on the failed drugs policy.which has enriched the criminals greatly.The State should be in charge of the distribution of all drugs and benefit the taxpayers as they do successfully with alcohol and cigarettes.People who abuse themselves excessively with smoking and alcohol should not prevent the majority being able to choose or not if they want to try them.By making something illegal increases its appeal and the criminal fraternity is well aware of that. What is the attraction of a "bank job" when drugs importation and dealing is so much more profitable?Come on MPs face the reality of a failed policy.

Joe, Altea, Spain

A tighter regulation on Alcohol and Tobacco?...sorry...come again...Regulating Alcohol?! In Britain?! HA HA! Good one but I think someone is having a right old giraffe laugh...Not a chance it will ever come to fruitition in any immediate future...soon enough it will cost £10 for a pack of cigarrettes and £5 for a pint! How many Millenium eyes, Super Casino's and wars may be constructed and conducted! Wishfull thinking chaps. Never gonna happen. Not with big Tony and the rest of the circus still in charge.

Adam, Glasgow,

David Leslie, I' m not entirely sure that picking up a speeding ticket criminalises one in the same way that being charged with, say, possession of cannabis or ecstasy does...

kd, Glasgow,

Drugs are long-term mind damaging. Alcohol is long term body damaging if taken to excess. In reasonable amounts, it's life-enhancing....even over a long time. Great having a glass of wine with my meal, but a spliff, no - sorry.

Phil, Preston,

JO, Cambridgeshiore

Alcohol, in moderation, is good for you. All illegal substances in *any* quantities are harmful.

Um, no they are not! thats the whole point. You are just pandering to the moral panic surounding this while debate. look at the FACTS not just your own narrow prejudices!

Emma, London,

The vast majority of illicit drug users are no different then the vast majority of drinkers or smokers. They wake up monday morning and go to work paying their way. If cannabis, cocaine, ketamine, psilocybin(mushrooms), or xtasy to name just a few made drooling idiots and criminals out of every user then our institutions of higher education would seldom produce much more then a chimp. Unfortunately the loudest critics are often those who have little or no personal experience using drugs other then alcohol and thus are simply reproducing the pandering propaganda produced by the tabloid press.

Drug policy should be a harm reduction policy, and the fact is most of the harm from even the so called hardest illicit drugs stems directly from the consequences of prohibition, not drug use. Take the income out of criminal hands, clean up the supply, and regulate the sale. These simple approaches would result in significant public savings and focus attention on repairing harm not creating it

Scott, Swansea,

Jo how do you KNOW that a little bit of every illegal substance is bad for you? And what about tobacco - LEGAL and extremely bad for you. 5 years for smoking marijuana is not going to stop any teenager smoking it, they don't give a damn about prisonfor smoking, they will do it anyway. There are 100,000's of people getting criminal records needlessly every year for stuff like this, this means they cannot join the armed forces etc who are 1000's short in manpower anyway.

Tom, london, UK

John Yates describes the drug laws as criminalising those that would not normally be criminals (as does all criminal law, if murder wasn't a crime, there would be no imprisoned, criminalised murderes). How does that stand with police support for speed cameras, where people are 'criminalised' not for running down pedestrians, crashing into other cars or causing any other damage, but for just driving at a higher speed than the arbitrary speed limit, which was brought in in response to the oil crisis of the early 70's?

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Drug Laws and Drug Wars will continue as long as Governments
find them useful as a source for funding certain intellgience operations, controlling certain groups of individuals, and maintaining the flow of political support from the large number of "special interest" groups that are addicted to the benefits of laws whch criminalize the sale and use of certain drugs.

Tom Kellum, Houston, Texas

Alcohol, in moderation, is good for you. All illegal substances in *any* quantities are harmful. That is the difference, and why it is imperative that they remain illegal. The reason the laws are ignored is because they are not enforced. Ever want to see crime drop? Give a five-year custodial sentence for possession of the highly-toxic marijuana. But they won't do it.

jo, Cambridgeshire, UK

Some contributors seem to think that the abuse of alcohol only harms the user. In fact, alcohol is a major factor in physical assault,violent crime, industrial accidents, road accidents, sexual abuse,etc. The list goes on.

John, Weybridge, UK

Efficiency and clean hands don't go together as far as drugs are concerned. Quite a few people should get over it. Obviously, some drugs such as cannabis and cocaine should be licensed. There are reservations for a similar treatment to more damaging drugs such as crack or heroine but these should then be provided to registered addicts free of charge. These two actions would cut crime and the funding of crime quite substancially. Lastly, rather than trafficking being targetted, we should target drugs pushers trying to get minors into drugs. Everybody would end up much better off except for criminals, the latter including the big bosses who are in practice impossiblt to catch.

Jean Loup, London, UK

I think Alice Miles' premise is wrong. You should not base your policy on which drugs cause most harm, but on an estimate of which policy can cause most good. The harm a drug causes is but one factor in that estimate. Another factor is how widely used a drug is, and how widely that use is accepted. And that will lead you to a policy where abuse of alcohol and tobacco is only discouraged or even just politely advised against, whereas less harmful drugs can be prohibited successfully. That is how the real politics work.

Dirk Bosmans, Kruibeke, Belgium

Its quite ridiclious that the government, who only ten years ago were seen to be part of this new "young" society have totally lost the scope of how many people take drugs. Its a massive number. You only have to ask one person and one person will be able to get you something, its easy to get drugs. Annoyingly its the users who are being targeted and being made to look like the criminals for having a puff on a spliff or doing one line of coke. Its an archaic and despictable law which MUST be changed for the benefit of society.

Greg, Newcastle, Tyneside

If drugs are sold through Commercial Outlets, whose main aim in life is to make a profit, on the goods it sells, then no labelling in the World will stop the spread of its use - to the detriment of the users and Society.

Best make them available through specific agencies and Licensed Premises, with prescriptions as applicable, and we might keep tabs on the situation. We have given in far too long to the Retail Chains.

John Charlesworth, Sleaford , UK

I live next door to two drug addicts,young men in their twenties.Drugs are not only a problem with them,they are a problem for the whole neighborhood.They steal constantly.Everything you own has to be locked up and guarded.These two have been in countless rehab programs,none worked because these two men like drugs.Drugs are a problem for everyone around a user,not just to the users themselves.

RON, topsham,

Considering the amount of tax the government would be able to levy by legalising and regulating drugs, I am incredibly surprised that it isn't top of Gordon Brown's agenda. It would give him billions more to waste!

Josh, London,

For the state to legislate against a citizen’s wish to damage the self through substance abuse goes against libertarian and free market ideas, unless the rights and freedoms of others are adversely affected.

However, rational goal-directed behaviour can be destroyed by some drugs, with the substitution of an addictive, laid-back, focussed hedonism and lack of interest in working and providing for family. This could be deeply destructive of civilisation as we know it. The poverty and endemic apathy resulting from habitual use of the coca leaf can be seen in parts of South America.

In theory, education as to the inherent danger of everything from excessive alcohol to any lesser understood mind changing substance should enable informed choice, but there remains the hidden agenda of those with personality disorder where the preference for the handicap of others is a perverse alternative to meritocracy.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

I think drinking alcohol is a private thing.But drinking too much is a bad thing.

EricW, Nanjing,

People like John of Lewes think they sound very humane and liberal in talking about 'free citizens'' right to misuse alcohol and drugs. But free citizens also have the right to walk the streets and to drive their cars without risking crime and damage from drug- or alcohol-fuelled lunatics - a hazard increasingly common. Further, in many years practising as a doctor in the UK, I heard this 'human rights' argument over and again, but I never once heard a patient severely damaged by alcohol or smoking refuse expensive and time-consuming medical treatment, or complain then about the 'Nanny state'. That's different, isn't it?

Andrew May, De Panne, Belgium

Society's approach to drugs has been misleading. Instead of increasing awareness of a) effects and b) contents of drugs, they have become illegal, stigmatised and part of the black market culture. Society has allowed all illicit drugs to be labelled 'bad' without giving a full and detailed explanation of why.
People should be allowed to make up their own minds. I have never tried heroin because it is highly addictive and I don't like the idea of sticking a needle in my arm. Neither have I tried coke because I am worried I'll like it too much. I have come to these conclusions knowing that I could easily get hold of the stuff to try it.
As for alcohol - there are more annual deaths from misuse of alcohol than any illicit drug. It should not be banned, as I doubt this would work but a raised level of awareness would go a long way.

Frances Roberson, Croydon, UK

I fear this sensible review with obvious conclusions will be ignored and the panic stricken daily mail approach will win.

This country is not ready to see sense on this issue yet, it may take another generation to sort this mess out.

Unfortuanely I can see we are going to have to tolerate headlines in the tabloids explaining the perils of cannabis and cocaine - perhaps even calls for making them illegal!!

P S Simon, London, UK

Several major Eastern religions teach the benefits of following "panca-sila", or five-fold morality - abstaining from killing, stealing, lying, sexual miscondiuct and taking alcohol. The last is regarded as the most critical, as intoxication can lead to breaking the other four silas. In my own case, I was never interested in alcohol or tobacco but used psychedelic drugs, mainly from 1967-72. I don't know what harm this did, if any, but it did start me on a spiritual journey from which I and others have benefitted. Can the same be said of alcohol use?

Faustino, Brisbane, Australia

SOrry Alice, I don't think you are entirely right. If you look more at the proportional rate of damage, and how long it takes to cause it, alcohol and cigarettes are pretty low down the scale.
There is centuries of evidence on this. "Drugs" cause chronic and often rapid problems - whereas the effect of alcohol and tobacco take much much longer - decades even to create damage.
Given all the recent evidence on the serious damage cannabis does i.e it can permanently fry your brain, I think we should tread very very carefully on legalisaiton of "soft" drugs"

tim, uxbridge,

I know exactly what the daily mail will say.

They will say cannabis can cause mental illness and cocaine causes heart disease. They will probably get really confused then and demand these drugs are immediately made illegal...

P S Simon, London, UK

I agree with John!

Kimi , Melbourne,

I think alcohol is very bad to people' s health, we should not drink to much alcohol!

Jing Sun, Peking, China

Off Licences should be licensed to sell all drugs. They should issue clearly written guidelines with all purchases. Currently they sell cigarettes that clearly state that they will kill. Heroin should be marked accordinly with enclosed colour photos of the likey effects. Cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine should be clearly detailed as dangerous and inadvisable.
If free citizens in a free and open democracy choose to use them - it is their right. Protecting them from such foolishness has only built up a rich criminal network. It has not worked. It is no job of the Government to act the Nanny. It is the job of Government to control drug sales. It has done so with great success with alcohol.
The vast majority of citizens drink sensibly. Is it to be seriously considered that we ban alcohol because idiots abuse it? Children are clever enough to know what to take and are more likely to use drugs sensibly without seedy sellers and stupid laws.

John, Lewes, East Sussex