Drugs: Alan Johnson deaf to Reason, attentive only to Police Authorities

What did Professor David Nutt say to cause Alan Johnson the home Secretary to sack him? He set out his views in his Eve Saville Lecture, Imperial College London in July 2009.

In it he says:
I think we have to accept young people like to
experiment – with drugs and other potentially
harmful activities – and what we should be doing
in all of this is to protect them from harm at this
stage of their lives. We therefore have to provide
more accurate and credible information. If you
think that scaring kids will stop them using, you’re
probably wrong. They are often quite knowledgeable
about drugs and the internet has made access to
information extremely simple. We have to tell them
the truth, so that they use us as their preferred
source of information. A fully scientifically-based
Misuse of Drugs Act where drug classification
accurately refl ects harms would be a powerful
educational tool.
[emphasis added - RL]

David Nutt repeats the phrase "accurate and credible information" in his piece in the Guardian last Thursday.

So this is the nub. The scientific advisor wants drug law to reflect sound evidence. The Home Office on the other hand wants to persist with the current absurd ABC classification.

What does Alan Johnson have to say for himself? In a letter to the Guardian today he plays the constituency card : There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse [referring to the risk comparison between horse riding and ecstasy] – there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction.

Maybe, Alan, but tens of thousands at immediate risk of alcohol, yet Government takes no action on alcopops and the easy and cheap availability of alcohol. (How much does the drinks industry donate to the Labour Party? I'm only asking)

In his lecture, the Professor has a table on the public opinion on reclassifying Cannabis to the more risky Class B. There was a clear majority of opinion in favour of leaving it in the less draconian Class C. Totals were 278/121 in favour of class C. That included a lot of personal opinions, but Health professionals , Statutory Partnerships, Local Authorities
Drug Service Providers, Charity & Voluntary Groups and Lobby/Activist/Pressure groups were all in favour of leaving it in class C, with 86 in favour of class C and 47 in favour of upgrading again to class B.

Interesting that Health Professionals vote 7-3 in favour of leaving it as Class C. So much for the argument that the reclassification is about anxiety about the greater potential for skunk to cause psychosis.

There was one group and one group only whowere in favour of making it class B, meaning a 5 year prison sentence instead of a mere 2 years in our underused prison facilities. That was the Police Authorities, who had 19 in favour of upgrading to Class B and 4 opposed.

So who did the Home Office side with? The police. Who obviously feel that they have time on their hands, feel that the courts and prisons are not running to capacity.

This is a battle for the role of scientific reasoning in policy making. Let's hope that the scientific community has the courage to come together on this principle, and shame the Home Office into reinstating Professor David Nutt.

PS: List of politicians who have taken drugs.

Continued in next post.

Government Drugs policy criticised by Official Advisor

From the Guardian today:

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs, criticised politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.The Imperial College professor argued for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively," said Nutt in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London published tomorrow ... Nutt criticised (former Home Secretary) Jacquie Smith's use of the "precautionary principle" to justify her decision to reclassify cannabis and said that by erring on the side of caution politicians "distort" and "devalue" the research evidence.

Nutt acknowledged there was a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness linked to cannabis use. But he argued that to prevent one episode of schizophrenia it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" cannabis.

...Richard Garside, director of the centre for crime and justice, said Nutt's briefing paper gave an insight into what drugs policy might look like if it was based on the research evidence rather than political or moral positioning.


RL: Cannabis was downgraded, then upgraded again, after pressure from my psychiatric colleagues, who see psychosis brought on by cannabis particularly skunk .

Skunk has been artificially developed to have high levels of THC, the part that stimulates the "branching thought" aspect of getting stoned. Natural cannabis has a higher level of CBD, which has a calming effect, and indeed, there is evidence that it has an antipsychotic (=anti-schizophrenia) effect.

By lowering the THC/CBD ratio, skunk may therefore tip more people into schizophrenia.

We should note that the illegality of cannabis drives consumers to grow skunk, since illegality makes imported grass and hashish more difficult to obtain. Homegrown weed is weak, so peeps turn to skunk.

I agree that drug policy should be changed and liberalised, because illegalisation is a failed policy, which arguably drives up drug use, puts consumers in touch with criminals, carries immense costs in terms of police and court effot, and is contributing to prison overcrowding. It is reasonable tosuppose that it contributes to paranoia.

However, moderate as ever, recognising that drugs policy is driven by irrationality, I would like to suggest that if politicians are determined to use the present absurd system, they should modify it, and leave Skunk cannabis into class B along with cough mixture and speed, but put regular cannabis down again into class C along with ketamine (?? wtf??), tranquillisers and some pain killers.

Anyone can tell the difference between skunk and regular dope. The clue is in the name; skunk has a distinctive smell. In court, there has to be forensic evidence, and the evidence can say what the THC/CBD ratio was in the specimen in question.

So we're bending over backwards here to accommodate the conservatives. Will they buy the logic? Don't hold your breath. It might make you dizzy and euphoric, and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

Medical Harm reduction note: If, regardless of Lex Asinus, you insist on exercising your right to mess with your state of consciousness regardless of the law, the best way to take it is either to eat or drink it (be careful of the dose, it takes longer to hit this way) or as a Vaporiser.

[update: within hours of my writing this, Government agents defenestrated the Drugs Advisor for ..er.. giving them advice. That's the trouble with scientists, they only understand evidence, they don't understand politics]

Technorati Blog

I visited Technorati, having searched for Opium in my blog, and they invited me to blog on opium so I wrote this:

The first problem: humans are suckers for anything addictive, in this case, opium and violence.

The second problem: we are, by waging war on drugs, trying to solve one addiction with another.

Third problem: War just creates a better armed and more cunning enemy. Note also that the terrorist favours the drug trade as a source of revenue.

Fourth problem: the war on drugs is ineffective. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, we are on the losing side.

Now. Then. Let us rethink this issue. If military forces do not work, are there any other forces beginning with M that we can think of? Yes? Yes! Right! Market forces.

And how does that work in this case? Well, the farmer grows the opium. The drug baron/terrorist offers the farmer $100 for his crop. But the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime offers them $110. (Since you ask , this comes from about 0.001% of the cost of trying to fight a War on Drugs). So the farmer sells to UNODC, who sells some of it for pharmaceuticals and the drug dependence programmes, and destroys the rest.

And there, in a nutshell, we have it. Yes there are implemetation details to be worked out, difficulties to be overcome, important people to be persuaded. But we will get there. Eventually. At the end. Because the alternative is expnsive, deadly and ultimately futile.

And it is not just some inconsequential blogger saying this. Read on: http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/Opium_licensing