Legalise drugs

SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico's drugs war - a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place.

Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do?

The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal.

The argument most often deployed in support of the status quo is that keeping drugs illegal curbs drug use among the law-abiding majority, thereby reducing harm overall. But a closer look reveals that this really doesn't stand up. In the UK, as in many countries, the real clampdown on drugs started in the late 1960s, yet government statistics show that the number of heroin or cocaine addicts seen by the health service has grown ever since - from around 1000 people per year then, to 100,000 today. It is a pattern that has been repeated the world over.

A second approach to the question is to look at whether fewer people use drugs in countries with stricter drug laws. In 2008, the World Health Organization looked at 17 countries and found no such correlation. The US, despite its punitive drug policies, has one of the highest levels of drug use in the world (PLoS Medicine, vol 5, p e141).

A third strand of evidence comes from what happens when a country softens its drug laws, as Portugal did in 2001. While dealing remains illegal in Portugal, personal use of all drugs has been decriminalised. The result? Drug use has stayed roughly constant, but ill health and deaths from drug taking have fallen. "Judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalisation framework has been a resounding success," states a recent report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC.

By any measure, making drugs illegal fails to achieve one of its primary objectives. But it is the unintended consequences of prohibition that make the most compelling case against it. Prohibition fuels crime in many ways: without state aid, addicts may be forced to fund their habit through robbery, for instance, while youngsters can be drawn into the drugs trade as a way to earn money and status. In countries such as Colombia and Mexico, the profits from illegal drugs have spawned armed criminal organisations whose resources rival those of the state. Murder, kidnapping and corruption are rife.

Making drugs illegal also makes them more dangerous. The lack of access to clean needles for drug users who inject is a major factor in the spread of lethal viruses such as HIV and hepatitis C.

So what's the alternative? There are several models for the legal provision of recreational drugs. They include prescription by doctors, consumption at licensed premises or even sale on a similar basis to alcohol and tobacco, with health warnings and age limits. If this prospect appals you, consider the fact that in the US today, many teenagers say they find it easier to buy cannabis than beer.

Taking any drug - including alcohol and nicotine - does have health risks, but a legal market would at least ensure that the substances people ingest or inject are available unadulterated and at known dosages. Much of the estimated $300 billion earned from illegal drugs worldwide, which now funds crime, corruption and environmental destruction, could support legitimate jobs. And instead of spending tens of billions enforcing prohibition, governments would gain income from taxes that could be spent on medical treatment for the small proportion of users who become addicted or whose health is otherwise harmed.

Unfortunately, the idea that banning drugs is the best way to protect vulnerable people - especially children - has acquired a strong emotional grip, one that politicians are happy to exploit. For many decades, laws and public policy have flown in the face of the evidence. Far from protecting us, this approach has made the world a much more dangerous place than it need be.

Being made to feel Darwin's anguish

The pain that Darwin felt when his beloved 10-year-old daughter died is well known. Annie was his favourite, and her death stripped him of the last vestiges of his belief in Christianity.

Watching this film about Darwin's life, I felt his pain – in having to sit through nearly two hours of Annie's ghost appearing to him and admonishing him. "Don't you dare give up on your book, daddy," it says, wagging its finger when Darwin is agonising about the reception his work will get. I desperately didn't want to give up on the film, but well before the end it had lost me.

Paul Bettany's Darwin, whom we first see in Tierra del Fuego on board the Beagle, starts the film charismatic and amiable. No stranger to this sort of role, Bettany previously played the fictional 18th-century ship's surgeon and proto-Darwinian Stephen Maturin in Master and Commander. Darwin's wife, Emma, is played by Jennifer Connelly (Bettany's real-life wife), who is likewise on familiar ground: she was once cast as the spouse of another scientific genius, mathematician John Nash, in A Beautiful Mind.

It's wonderful to see Darwin played as a young man and a father, passionate, mischievous and inspiring, rather than portrayed as the name behind the idea, or the bearded old man of those familiar black-and-white photos. No problem either with the dramatisation of his complex relationship with God-fearing Emma. And the touching scene when Darwin meets Jenny the orang-utan – the first time he'd come face to face with a great ape – is beautifully executed, brilliantly capturing the humanity of our fellow apes.

The problem with the film is the conceit of having Annie materialise and interact with Darwin in order to illustrate the impact her death had on him. As a device, it is unsubtle and irritating, and makes for a cartoon account of the writing of On the Origin of Species, one that presupposes that an audience will only appreciate Darwin's anguish if it is spelled out in gigantic, sentimental letters waved by a pretty ghost.

I put this view more gently to Randal Keynes, Darwin's great-great-grandson, who wrote the book Annie's Box – an account of Darwin's family life and of his relationship with Annie in particular – and who gets a writing credit on this movie. "The film is based on the knowledge that Darwin lived with the memory of his daughter all his life. He was a man of passion, and people have missed that," said Keynes. "Putting the ghost in can be regarded as the film producer's license to tell the story."

We should be thankful that Darwin's life story has made it to the big screen, yet even before Annie has died, the film shows its scorn for the ability of the audience to appreciate the subject matter. In case anyone was in doubt about the ire Darwin's work would arouse, the local vicar is seen telling him, "You're pitting science against God!" This is a child's guide as to why there might just be a conflict of interest in some people's minds between natural selection and religion.

A dramatised account of the development of "the single best idea anyone has ever had", as Daniel Dennett called the theory of evolution, needs exceptional treatment. If only this film had got it.

Airborne laser ready for flight tests

IT SHOULD be the moment of truth for the Airborne Laser (ABL). In the coming months, the multibillion-dollar laser built into a customised Boeing 747 will try to shoot a ballistic missile as it rises above the clouds.

Don't expect instant reports of success, though. Instead, if all goes to plan, we're likely to hear about a series of incremental improvements.

Developed by the US Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the ABL aims to focus a beam of laser energy in the megawatt range for several seconds onto a missile at a "militarily significant distance" - more than 100 kilometres.

So far, the laser has only operated at near full power on the ground. On 18 August it was fired successfully from the air, but at reduced power. That, however, was no mean feat: aircraft vibrations play havoc with the precisely aligned optical components needed to generate a laser beam.

Firing at full power poses other challenges too. At powers high enough to destroy missiles, any surface contamination or tiny flaw in the laser optics can absorb so much heat that they crack or shatter.

High-power laser beams also heat the air they pass through, creating perturbations that can disperse or divert the beam. To counteract those effects, the ABL uses an adaptive system that senses atmospheric changes along its path and makes optical adjustments to compensate.

To test that system, the MDA plans a series of increasingly powerful shots at modified ballistic missiles loaded with sensors to measure the distribution of laser power on the target. Engineers will assess each shot's performance and use the results to fine-tune the adaptive optics. Once this is done, the MDA will test the laser again in varying conditions, and attempt to destroy actual missiles. The first of these tests is planned to take place late this year, with two more to follow in early 2010, according to an MDA spokeswoman.

A sister project, the Advanced Tactical Laser, which aims to use an airborne high-powered laser to hit targets on the ground, recently completed its first successful test. With future funding dependent upon the success of these tests, the pressure is on the ABL team to prove its efficacy.

Mock lunar landers set to compete for $1 million prize

Over the coming weeks, three teams will try to complete the second and final stage of the Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC), sponsored by NASA and aerospace company Northrop Grumman.

Last October, Armadillo Aerospace of Texas won level one of the challenge and $350,000 by building a rocket that made two 90-second flights, reaching an altitude of 50 metres, between flat concrete pads 100 metres apart. On Saturday, they will be aiming for the million-dollar prize for the more challenging level two.

The aim this time is to complete two flights, each lasting 3 minutes. If it can stay aloft in Earth's gravity for that long, the vehicle would have enough power to take off from the surface of the moon and go into lunar orbit.

The vehicle also has to land on a rough landscape, akin to a lunar landing site. Armadillo created their mock moonscapes at Caddo Mills airfield in Texas, using rocks and gravel.