U.S. silenced World Health Organization report on cocaine

Transform has the story:

The largest ever study of cocaine use around the globe was carried out in the early 90’s by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) and funded by the UN Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), but under pressure from the US its publication was suppressed when it became clear the report’s findings were in direct conflict with the myths, stereotypes and propaganda that prop up the war on drugs (read the complete leaked report here).

Some of the conclusions from the report that the U.S. didn’t like:

• “Health problem; from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use.
• Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users.”

There’s lots more, and the U.S. threatened to withhold funding from the WHO unless they disassociated themselves with the report. Go read Transform’s entire post.