Crispin was elected MP for Reigate in 1997 having formerly served as an army officer. In Parliament, Crispin has served in the Shadow Cabinet with briefs including trade and energy and security and counter-terrorism. He has served as both Minister for Prisons and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is currently the co-Chair  …

Neil Woods is a former Undercover Drugs Detective Sergeant whose brief was to infiltrate Britain’s most dangerous drug gangs, befriending the foot soldiers before taking on their gangster bosses. Neil risked his life to infiltrate some of the UK’s most vicious gangs, by doing so he came to realise the terrifying reality of the drug  …

  This event was held ten years to the day that Professor David Nutt was fired from his role as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for standing for drugs policies grounded in science and evidence. Now a decade later, we held another event with Professor Nutt to take stock and  …

The Lancet has recently published a series of articles about drug use. More specifically, the use of opioids, cannabinoids, stimulants, and new psychoactive substances (NPS). One of these articles highlights an increasingly relevant issue of international drug policy. This comment titled Change But Not Progression, emphasises that Governments around the world continue to pedal policies  …

In collaboration with drug experts in Norway and the UK, multi-criteria decision analysis has been applied to evaluating drug policies for the first time - read the paper here. We have previously applied this technique to investigate harms of common recreational drugs in 2010, and nicotine-containing products in 2014. Drug policy, whether for legal or  …

Fifteen years ago when Portugal decriminalized the consumption of all narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances it was both a bold and a desperate move to curb the drug problem that the country faced at the time. In this paper, I analyse the Portuguese drug policy, its historical foundation, its success and its possible future. This  …

Recently, there has been a more profound political debate in Latin American countries around the possibilities of legal regulation and decriminalization of currently controlled drugs, particularly cannabis. This debate is a complex one that deals with a growing drug trade towards North America and Europe, as well as oversaturated judicial and health systems across Latin  …