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In response to a recent letter in the Oxford Mail...

I believe Alan Page (1st Feb) is completely wrong on drugs, though I am probably in a minority. Prohibition, especially of something addictive, is mad. It makes criminals of people who literally “cannot help it” once they are hooked.

For most of history humans have used natural based drugs for health, recreation, and even religious rites. In the nineteenth century when both opium and cocaine were legal, the group most likely to indulge were upper class women. They really only became illegal when the lower classes wanted to join the fun, and often on racist grounds at that.

While they were legal and available in controlled, measured, self-administered doses, addicts functioned perfectly well with few adverse health or social effects, unlike those whose poison was or is alcohol.

People get into more risky methods of use, such as injecting, to get the greatest “hit” precisely because they do not know where their next one may come from or when. The worst will use multiple substances to compensate for an irregular supply of their preferred drug.

On the same principle as “good money drives out bad” who would go to the shady man in the darkened windowed BMW to get a supply of unknown quality or strength if your local pharmacist or nightclub were selling regulated doses alongside the beer or cough mixture?

And you can bet respectable companies have plans for that eventuality already in place.

There's a bit of a kerfuffle started up over a report by eminent science guru Colin Blakemore and David Nutt of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and MPs like the report and want change.

But there's something I would like to know about the research - if anyone finds an answer to this I'd be grateful.

Heroin and cocaine are in there as number one and two most harmful drugs (followed by barbiturates, methodone and then good ole grog incidentally - way ahead of LSD at 14th and Ecstacy at 18th). Now I presume first that they are not distinguishing between different forms of cocaine and that in that figure is both David Cameron's alleged adolescent sniff of white powder and crack or freebase cocaine use (nor presumably the millions of people who use the coca plant itself, or the tonic wine, toothpastes or cola drinks that once contained versions of cocaine).

But I'm intrigued about the heroin place. I was under the impression that biochemically heroin, properly dosed, was actually less damaging to the human body than alcohol - yes, overdosing and so on lead to hearts stopping (as do overdosing on alcohol and all depressants) which is definitely not good for the human body but, well managed, you can get a "high" without taking those sorts of risks and be less damaged by it than a similar high from alochol.

So is this research about the harm of a substance itself or the relative harm of each substance given the peculiar social circumstances in which it is taken. Or put it another way, are they trying to gauge the relative harm despite these drugs being illegal and therefore prone to tampering with and uncertain dosage and the whole criminal world that surrounds their supply chain?

My suspicion is that these placings would change again if all of these substances were legal and controlled.

Certainly any evidence based input to future discussion of illicit drugs is welcome but just changing how legal or otherwise a substance is seen as by the courts won't take away the criminal underworld that surrounds drugs and causes adulteration, misinformation and pushing people into multiple dependencies which they are then scared to deal with even when they want to.

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All this brouhaha about the Olympics, torches, boycotts and so on has not passed me by. I hear all sorts of stuff from the "athletes' side" about how the Olympics is not political, about how people have trained all their lives to get to this supreme test of their skills and abilities against others from every nation on earth. I have some sympathy with that. I was once quite a competitive fencer. I used to love the competitions (second in the West Midlands under 16s foil if you're interested and can believe it!) and I can only imagine the excitement and satisfaction of having made it to the very top on the planet in your discipline.

But saying that the Olympics is not political seems to me nowadays like saying it's non-commercial and strictly amateur - at least the latter has been the case within my life time. But, as we all saw on 7th July 2005 (when there wasn't other news on that day), the choice of venue is intensely political, certainly in the sense that politicians are deeply involved in it. It can (and has already in the case of London) make people fortunes, that others pay for.

I admit to having had misgivings when Beijing was awarded the games - I don't like the fact that Formula One has a race there, though in a sense that's less of an issue because F1 is an unashamedly commercial, big money, oligarchic event that pays but lip service to the troubles of "little people" and with no loftier ideals such as the Olympic movement professes. But I, along with many others it seems, did hope that having such a high profile international event, together with their growing commercial and economic presence in the world, would focus minds in China on reform. Until I think it was last year sometime that someone high up in the Chinese government said something to the effect that China would never be a liberal democracy ("over my dead body" by implication). I accept that moving such a huge population to full democracy would take time, but this was a "never, never, never" type of statement.

Ever since I have thought that "we" should somehow object to the whole shebang and the credence it gives to the veneer of acceptability. I know that in 1980 the Moscow regime was pretty similar to Beijing's and that the boycott then was a specific protest about the invasion of Afghanistan (oh how we can now ruefully laugh about that!) and it did no good whatever so far as I can remember - though even then, China joined the boycott. So as an organized thing, I'm not sure a "national" boycott will do any good this time either. However, as in 1980, there are other symbolic objections we in the democratic world can make. Athletes could attend and take part under the flag of the Olympic movement rather than their national flags and anthems for example.

But it is pure fantasy to say that the Olympics are non-political - they never have been in reality, even long before they became a festival for junk food vendors and sweat shop employers to tout their tawdry wares and part of a professional athlete's career progression. The Soviet Union - and other countries within their sphere of influence - didn't take part from 1928 till 1952. African nations withdrew in protest at South Africa and Rhodesia being allowed to take part in the seventies. If it really were apolitical, why does the torch even go anywhere near Downing Street - surely if it's all above politics it should be a royal occasion.

Personally, if any athlete choses voluntarily, having gained a place in the team, not to attend, putting lives in Darfur, Tibet or, so far little mentioned despite last year's riots and crackdown, Burma before their personal attainment, they'll have my full support and they ought not to be punished or denigrated for making that sacrifice.