Last week, reminds The DrugSpot: Anniversary of the Opium Exclusion Act, was an anniversary (though not quite centenary yet) of the start of one of the most destructive and baseless wars the world has seen - the "War on Drugs".

I recommend anyone with a vague interest in it to go read the blog article. It highlights how prohibition was, by turns, a muddled policy led by a few evangelical campaigners (think the Temperance Movement in the UK) on moral rather than medical grounds, a racist policy aimed at people of far eastern origin where missioinaries were trying to do that imperial thing "civilise them", and a measure sponsored by the vested interests of the pharmaceutical companies (recall for example that Merck acquired a patent on MDMA - Ecstasy to you and me - as early as 1912).

It highlights that the principal effect of prohibition was a flight to using as yet uncontrolled substances like morphine and heroin and the birth of the junkies' love affair with far more dangerous forms of what had been relatively benign narcotics.

And the cost of that continuing "war" in money and lives is a tragedy of enormous scale. Do we have time to call a truce before it reaches that centenary?