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Professor David Nutt - Cannabis row drugs adviser sacked

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  • 02-11-2009 2:18am
    #1
    weedfreedomtinp
    Closed Accounts Posts: 92 ✭✭


    WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS





    The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after criticising government policies.
    Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.

    He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being politicised.
    The home secretary said he had “lost confidence” in his advice and asked him to step down.
    The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is the UK’s official drugs advisory body.
    Government ‘message’
    Following his sacking, Prof Nutt told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects.
    He described his sacking as a “serious challenge to the value of science in relation to the government”.
    And he denied that he had been trying to undermine the government’s policies on drugs.
    “To be honest, all I was trying to do was help,” he said, adding that he was not prepared to “mislead” the public about the effects of drugs in order to convey a moral “message” on the government’s behalf.
    Earlier this week Prof Nutt used a lecture at King’s College, London, to attack what he called the “artificial” separation of alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs.
    The professor said smoking cannabis created only a “relatively small risk” of psychotic illness, and claimed those who advocated moving ecstasy into Class B had “won the intellectual argument”.
    Public concern over the links between high-strength cannabis, known as skunk, and mental illness led the government to reclassify cannabis to Class C last year.
    In the past, Prof Nutt has also claimed that taking ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse.
    In a letter, the home secretary wrote: “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD.
    “I would therefore ask you to step down from the Council with immediate effect.”
    In his reply, Prof Nutt said he was “disappointed” by the sentiments expressed by Mr Johnson.
    He added: “Whilst I accept that there is a distinction between scientific advice and government policy there is clearly a degree of overlap.




    “If scientists are not allowed to engage in the debate at this interface then you devalue their contribution to policy making and undermine a major source of carefully considered and evidence-based advice.”


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