Nick Clegg: Britain is losing the war on drugs Earlier this year Dame Sally Davies, Britain's most senior doctor, admitted that she had taken cannabis while at university but stopped after suffering hallucinations. She has previously said that criminalising drugs deters addicts from seeking medical help, and said she would be "ready with quite a lot of advice" if ministers decided to make them legal. She said: "Of course it's a medical problem, addiction is a medical problem and it becomes a public health problem and then our society is choosing to treat that as a criminal justice issue. I never smoked, so I couldn't smoke joints, but I did have some cookies until on the third or fourth occasion I had hallucinations and I have never touched it since. I think I understood through that what my father said to me when I told him I was going to try it. He said drugs de-civilise you, you stop being a civilised person.