RELEASE MEDICAL CANNABIS CAMPAIGN
1967 - 2009
DRUGS - THE LAW - HUMAN RIGHTS
ABOUT RELEASE
Our Mission:
RELEASE is the national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law – providing free and confidential specialist advice to the public and professionals. Release also campaigns for changes to UK drug policy to bring about a fairer and more compassionate legal framework to manage drug use in our society.
Our Vision:
Release believes that the present regime for the regulation of drugs will be regarded by future generations as one of the great policy disasters of the modern period. These arrangements result in far too many abuses of human rights, fail to protect individual and public health, erode respect for the law, undermine democracy and generate corruption. The War on Drugs is in fact a recipe for a society at war with itself, and this is what we find when we examine the state of global drug control.
The present system of drug control is the result of a complex and contingent set of historical factors and policy decisions. At the 2008 meeting of the UN drug control apparatus in Vienna, Antonio Costa—the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and normally a staunch defender of the status quo—publicly admitted that the system was not ‘fit for purpose’.
Release’s vision is for a society in which the age-old human practice of using drugs is viewed as a part of the human condition. Rather than committing ourselves to the fantasy of a drug-free world—something that never has existed and never will—we should accept drugs as part of life, and educate and regulate to restrict their negative effects. Whether this happens through a reinterpretation and reconfiguration of the present structure, or requires a more radical overhauling of institutional and juridical arrangements, remains to be seen.
COMPASSION NOT POLITICS
We campaign on specific issues which this year include:
• Medical Cannabis – access to drug for pain relief for a number of medical conditions
• Drug paraphernalia – legal distribution of all harm reduction equipment
• Drug mules – fairer sentencing guidelines
• Hepatitis C – access to treatment for all
We also campaign on a broad agenda for drug policy reform that includes:
• Greater investment in drugs education
• Fairer sentencing guidelines to prevent unnecessary incarceration of women
• Recognition that drug use is a personal choice and a civil right
• Recognition that the majority of drug use does not warrant interference from the state
• Increased access to support and health care services for problem drug users
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