British funnyman Russell Brand gave a speech advocating the decriminalisation of drugs at a United Nations panel in Vienna, Austria on Wednesday (19Mar14).

The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star is a recovering drug addict and has famously been vocal about his experiences, appearing on a number of Tv programmes calling for a change in drug laws.

He has now taken his decriminalisation stance to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs. Brand is backing the Support, Don't Punish campaign, which lobbies for addicts to be helped rather than treated like criminals, and he is also advocating a global consensus on how to deal with drugs.

He said during his speech, "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."