A Walmart employee with sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor who was fired for using medical marijuana will not be rehired, even though the company says it is "sympathetic" to his condition.
Joseph Casias, 29, was fired in November from a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Mich., after marijuana was detected in a routine drug screening that he underwent after he sprained his knee at work.
Casias, who was the store's 2008 associate of the year, said he legally used marijuana to reduce pain associated with his disease and was never under the influence while at work.
The politicians want marijuana viewed as an extremely dangerous drug, while the scientists say tobacco and alcohol pose more of a threat to the British public.
The divergence of views has cost the government's top drug adviser his job and sparked a revolt among his colleagues, who accuse Prime Minister Gordon Brown of ignoring scientific advice to score political points.
Political expediency "rules the roost" over scientific advice, one of the three latest government drug advisers to resign has told BBC News.
Dr Simon Campbell quit the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs on Monday, over the sacking of chief drugs adviser Professor David Nutt.
Alan Johnson dismissed Prof Nutt for "crossing a line" into politics.
Dr Campbell said home secretaries would listen to scientific advice but had usually already made their decisions.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "When we made our recommendation on cannabis we saw no reason to change the classification and yet the government has already decided to move from Class C to Class B."
"That can only be because the government saw it as a votes-catching exercise."
Politicians need to tell the truth about drugs, not sack those who are brave enough to do so
IT WAS unwise of Richard Nixon to describe the worldwide prohibition of narcotics as a “war on drugs”. But the ban, which marked a gloomy 40th anniversary this year, has been very much like a war in one sense: the first casualty has been the truth. The latest victim is David Nutt, an eminent psychopharmacologist who was sacked from his role as chair of Britain’s drugs advisory panel on October 30th after a bust-up with the home secretary (see article). Dr Nutt was held to have overstepped the line between advising and interfering when he repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy were less harmful than the government claims.
An outspoken scientist is dumped, leaving the government in a mess
“THE Nutty Professor”, as David Nutt is known in the Sun and other newspapers, has never been far from controversy. As chairman of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Dr Nutt, who heads Bristol University’s psychopharmacology unit, issued reports on narcotics and recommended where each should be placed on Britain’s three-point scale of harmfulness. Such is the seething state of the drugs debate that more or less anything he said was guaranteed to enrage somebody.
IF THERE is one thing that politicians can and should do to limit the damage caused by illegal drugs, it is to take careful note of the evidence and develop a rational drug policy. Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead.
I can trace the beginning of the end of my role as chairman of the UK's official advisory body on drugs to the moment I quoted a New Scientist editorial (14 February, p 5). Entitled, fittingly enough, "Drugs drive politicians out of their minds", the editorial asked the reader to imagine being seated at a table with two bowls, one containing peanuts, the other the illegal drug MDMA (ecstasy). Which is safer to give to a stranger? Why, the ecstasy of course.
Ministers can't expect to get the best advice if scientists know they can be sacked for telling the scientific truth as they see it
Did David Nutt overstep the line in his role as independent science adviser? Does there need to be a line at all? My answers are, no and yes, respectively.
The issues raised by the despicable sacking of Professor Nutt have wider importance than merely the debate over the classification of drugs – important as that is. Our complex societies are increasingly dependent on science and technology, and the problems we face increasingly involve scientific issues – from global warming and green energy, to GM foods and stem cell research. We cannot expect the public (or politicians, or even scientists outside their areas of expertise) to understand all these issues, but we should expect to have a government that consults expert scientists and listens to what they have to say.
Government divisons over the sacking of its chief drug adviser deepened yesterday as its most senior scientist backed Professor David Nutt for saying that cannabis was less harmful than alcohol.
Professor John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, said research showing the drug to be less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes was “absolutely clear cut”, though he stopped short of criticising Alan Johnson’s decision to dismiss him.
Comparing the dangers of ecstasy and equestrianism was provocative, as indeed was Professor David Nutt's more recent suggestion, which led to his sacking last week, that "politicised" drugs classifications concealed the reality that alcohol does more harm than LSD. To that extent – and to that extent only – the home secretary, Alan Johnson, had a point in suggesting that the top drugs adviser whom he dismissed on Friday had strained the limits of his scientific remit, and was effectively campaigning.
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By Joshua Rhett Miller Fox "News"
Political expediency "rules the roost" over scientific advice, one of the three latest government drug advisers to resign has told BBC News.
From Economist.com
From The Economist print edition
IF THERE is one thing that politicians can and should do to limit the damage caused by illegal drugs, it is to take careful note of the evidence and develop a rational drug policy. Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead.
By. 
By Mindelle Jacobs
Mark Henderson, Science Editor 
The Guardan
