If someone were to invent a perfectly safe ecstasy pill, what would be done about it? It's the sort of scenario clubbers like to speculate about, usually at around 6am, a little the worse for wear after a big night out. It's less common to hear it from a neuropsychopharmacologist and former government scientist – but it is, Professor David Nutt says earnestly, "the key question". So what does he think the government would do?
"They would ban it. They would find some pretext to ban it. I think they would, because beneath all their posturing about health lies a moral position where they don't think young people should have fun, other than being drunk." Read more »
What is losing? No-one really knows. In football there's a final whistle. In politics, there are elections. But policies have no timer, only consequences. How bad must those consequences be for us to call it quits over the war on drugs?
There are, and always have been, two drugs wars. One is bloody and violent and takes place on the streets of inner cities across the world. The other is seemingly calm and intellectual and it takes place in thinktanks, pubs, newspaper comment pages and universities - but rarely parliaments.
The intellectual drug war is now finished. The consensus has been reached. Today, Professor David Nutt, who was sacked by Alan Johnson as chief drugs adviser to the government for performing his task with a foolhardy commitment to truth and accuracy, revealed his alternative commission's drug classification list. The list is based, rather charmingly, on the actual harm that drugs cause, both personally and socially, rather than the arbitrary and demented ABC system we are currently labouring under. Unsurprisingly, the new list marks alcohol as the most damaging drug, followed by crack cocaine and heroin. Ecstasy is very far down. Read more »
What's worse for us, alcohol or crack cocaine? Careful - this isn't a no-brainer.
A new study says alcohol is more destructive than illegal drugs like heroin and crack.
British scientists, lead by Dr. David Nutt at the University of Bristol, evaluated these three drugs, as well as ecstasy and marijuana (20 drugs in all), ranking each of them on the following criteria: physical harm to the user, how addictive it is, and the effect of its use on families, communities, and society.
They included economic costs like health care, social services, and prison. Read more »
There is no intrinsic logic to the legality and illegality of drugs so why do we criminalise the use of some drugs and not others, asks Professor David Nutt, former chairman of the advisory council on the misuse of drugs
For many people, drug taking is pleasurable and for a significant minority, it is indirectly beneficial because it reduces pain and suffering (as with cannabis in multiple sclerosis). For a proportion, drug taking becomes a habit that, though once pleasurable, may end up being a compulsion devoid of any enjoyment; this latter state we call addiction. Drugs vary greatly in their addictive potential with tobacco, heroin and cocaine being at the top of the list with up to 40 per cent of all users becoming addicted. For alcohol, the proportion is about 15 per cent followed by cannabis (about 10 per cent) with the MDMA and the psychedelics at the bottom with little evidence of addiction. Read more »
The government's drug advisory council will make a recommendation to the home secretary on the status of the drug mephedrone, or "meow meow", at 4pm, despite the resignation of another key adviser.
The government's strained relationship with the scientific community came under further pressure with the resignation of Dr Polly Taylor, a consultant veterinary surgeon and long-standing member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), in a backlash over the way independent experts are treated by ministers.
Taylor is the sixth expert to resign from the committee since the controversial sacking of the chairman, Professor David Nutt, last October. Several other council members are considering their positions, the Guardian has learned.
A retired professor who said cannabis was one of the "safer" recreational drugs has taken over as chairman of the government's drugs advisory panel.
Pharmacology specialist Les Iversen replaced David Nutt, who was sacked by the home secretary last October for "lobbying" against government policy.
Prof Iversen said: "I think cannabis for the time being is past history."
He said much more active attention was currently being paid to so-called legal highs such as mephedrone.
Last year, Home Secretary Alan Johnson accused Prof Nutt of "crossing a line" into politics.
Prof Nutt is setting up an independent drugs panel to rival the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).
Since that sacking, Prof Iversen, formerly of Oxford, has chaired the council's meetings.
Following his interim appointment, Prof Iversen told the BBC: "I'm not the drug adviser to the government, I'm a spokesman for a large group of people on the advisory council, only a few of whom are scientists."
Five members of the government's official drugs advisory panel are to join a new independent group set up by sacked drugs adviser, David Nutt.
Prof Nutt said the new group would be "very powerful" and would take over the role of the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).
He said four of the five ex-ACMD members who resigned in protest at his sacking would also join the new body.
The Home Office said ACMD members were allowed to join another organisation.
BBC Home Affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said while it was theoretically possible for the drugs experts to be members of both groups, in practice it would make the framing of consistent drugs advice "rather tricky".
An alcohol substitute that gives the drinker the pleasant feelings of tipsiness without an unpleasant hangover, is being developed by researchers.
The team, led by drugs expert Professor David Nutt, has developed the drink using chemicals related to the sedative Valium.
It works on the nerves in a similar way to alcohol causing feelings of well-being and relaxation.
But no matter how many drinks the consumer has, they should remain only mildly drunk.
The scientists from Imperial College, London, hope the colourless, tasteless synthetic will eventually replace the alcohol content in beer, wine and liquor.
Professor David Nutt was sacked as a government adviser recently. He now hopes to create a successful alternative to alcohol
The substance has been tested on a number of volunteers.
A respected scientist set out to determine which drugs are actually the most dangerous -- and discovered that the answers are, well, awkward
By Mark Pothier, The Boston Globe
In the long and tortured debate over drug policy, one of the strangest episodes has been playing out this fall in the United Kingdom, where the country’s top drug adviser was recently fired for publicly criticizing his own government’s drug laws.
The adviser, Dr. David Nutt, said in a lecture that alcohol is more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the United Kingdom might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana smokers in jail. His comments were published in a press release in October, and the next day he was dismissed. The buzz over his sacking has yet to subside: Nutt has become the talk of pubs and Parliament, as well as the subject of tabloid headlines like: “Drug advisor on wacky baccy?”
But behind Nutt’s words lay something perhaps more surprising, and harder to grapple with. His comments weren’t the idle musings of a reality-insulated professor in a policy job. They were based on a list - a scientifically compiled ranking of drugs, assembled by specialists in chemistry, health, and enforcement, published in a prestigious medical journal two years earlier.
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By. Decca Aitkenhead, Guardian.co.uk
By Ian Dunt, Politics.co.uk
by Aina Hunter, CBS News
By. PublicService.co.uk
Until we know the real harm of legal recreational drugs such as mephedrone, they should be put into a holding 'class D'
By. BBC News
By. BBC
An alcohol substitute that gives the drinker the pleasant feelings of tipsiness without an unpleasant hangover, is being developed by researchers.
A respected scientist set out to determine which drugs are actually the most dangerous -- and discovered that the answers are, well, awkward
