Dopey decision

Written by Jack Serle Saturday, 21 November 2009 13:35

Jack Serle protests against the sacrifice of science for a political agenda...

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) was formed in 1971 by the act of parliament that instituted the ABC class system for illegal drugs, and the sentencing guidelines to go with them.
The ACMD provides the Home Office with considered advice compiled and presented by experts in pertinent fields after the analyses of all relevant data and debates. It was chaired by Professor David Nutt, holder of the Edmond J Safra chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London; a well respected scientist and presumably a highly intelligent man.

Ignoring the advice of such a body would be either well justified or just ignorant. Step up, Home Secretary Alan Johnson. He is the second Home Secretary of this Government to go against the advice of the ACMD. The first was Jacqui Smith – these two are the only two to reject the Council’s recommendations. Professor Nutt has been forced to resign, why exactly is not certain but it is becoming clear that Professor Nutt lost his unpaid position for holding opinions contrary to government policy.

The row stems from Professor Nutt’s recent lecture to the King's College, London, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. He stated cannabis to be no more harmful to public health than alcohol and cigarettes. He said this to highlight the need for all harmful substances, not just illegal substances, to be accounted for in investigations for comparisons sake. Note public health – this is not to pre-empt research into the link between cannabis and psychological and neurological disorders. It is a reference to the fact that alcohol and tobacco kill and hospitalise people in great numbers every year. It points to the data showing that many people have been hospitalized or killed through second hand smoke or someone else’s actions whilst intoxicated with alcohol. This is to the detriment of public health.

Illegal drugs impact enormously on public health, costing lives and money each year. Professor Nutt’s point acknowledges the simple fact that drug policy in this country has been wrong since the concept of banning substances first appeared. Somehow we have reached a stage where we are at war on drugs; in South America and Afghanistan this is no hyperbolic turn of phrase. Rather than fighting drugs, we should be fighting the reasons people turn to them in the first place.

Professor Nutt’s outspoken display, contradicting policy and undermining the government, was described by the Home Secretary as a bid to lobby for a policy change; that he was using the lecture and his position as chair of the ACMD to sway public opinion away from the government’s agenda. Yet Professor Nutt in no way broke the government’s own rules for independent advisors pursuing academic study and publication. He was speaking as the holder of the Edmond J Safra Chair at Imperial, not chairman of the ACMD – a distinction the government’s guidelines draw as permissible. In fact, the Professor is obliged to educate the public on his research fully to meet his moral duties as an expert scientist.

This is clearly a politically motivated action. It flies in the face of scientific opinion and research and underscores the hypocrisy of the divide between legal and illegal intoxicants. For the Home Secretary to ignore the advice of a specific body requires justification. It was a political decision and if the ACMD is just a pliable committee to okay whatever the government wants, with a scientific seal of approval, then Alan Johnson has a lot to answer for. It spits on the principle that the scientific agenda in this country is set and driven by peer-reviewed investigation and rigorous debate. It is not in the public interest for legislation to be based on scientific enquiry only when the science fits the bill.

Essentially, by Alan Johnson ignoring Professor Nutt’s advice then firing him on spurious grounds, it has once again been shown that we are governed by public opinion not public interest. He has added to the distortion of scientific principles by sidelining informed debate in a bid to have a rubber stamp to bash all over government policy. Clearly a decision was been made for all the wrong reasons. Cannabis’ reclassification is immaterial. How long you get in prison for selling or smoking the stuff is another argument. The decision to publicly abrade the image of scientific research and, thereby, government decision-making by firing David Nutt is shocking.

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