Comedian and actor Russell Brand has delivered a flamboyant plea at a United Nations gathering to bring an end to arrest and punishment of drug-users.
Brand, who is a reformed drug addict, told a press conference at the 57th Session Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, there is "no reason to pursue this experiment of prohibition which has lasted a century."
Backing the Support, Don't Punish campaign against criminalising drug use, Brand attacked claims that UN member states had adopted an international "consensus" on tackling drug use.
Brand was shown around UN negotiating rooms and met government representatives and campaigners.
"My personal experience is, I was using drugs because I was in a great deal of spiritual, emotional and physical pain and what I needed was a solution to those problems and what was provided to me to reach that solution was a context of compassion and tolerance," he said.
"What bigger context is there than the planet as a whole? If we can create a planetary context where drug addicts are treated as people with a health issue - not a judicial, criminal issue - that would create the perfect context for us to advance.
"Nobody at all is helped by drugs being made illegal, unless of course there is a conspiracy to marginalise, condemn and persecute disenfranchised members of our global community.
"I'd hate to think that was the situation - that certain countries didn't matter, that certain classes didn't matter, that certain races didn't matter.
"So, unless that's the situation, there's literally no reason to proceed with this experiment of prohibition which has lasted for a century that has done nothing but bring death, suffering, crime, created a negative economy, and deaths all over Mexico, deaths all over Malaysia, unnecessary death penalties."
The head of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the UN body for enforcing international drug treaties, recently warned that legalising cannabis poses a "grave danger to public health and well-being".
