Nanny knows best

Chuck Unsworth

Johnson's 'dedfence' of his actions was crass. His view that experts should advise whilst Ministers should decide is perfectly OK - just as long as Ministers are prepared to give their reasons for deciding not to take ther advice of their own appointeees. The execrable Balls is but another example of appalling arrogance in the face of compelling evidence.

But, with a Government which is solely driven by the headlines, which Minister is prepared to take a long view of anything? Thus policy is a mere adjunct to PR.

Is this really how we should be planning for the future of the generations to come?

Coney Weston

Johnson says Nutt is wrong on cannabis.

Thank goodness for the Royal Mail I say, the way they train their Postmen is amazing. Let me explain:
The other day, in the hiatus between postal strikes, my Postie pulled up in his little red van with a few letters for me.
"Hello guv," he said, "You look peeky"
I replied that I had a bit of a headache and was just going to take an Asprin".
"No, no, no" he cried, "You musn't do that, they're lethal."
"What 300 grams of Asprin?"
"Fatal mate, it's a damn good job I'm here, otherwise you could be face down in your kitchen with an overdose. Trust me, I'm a Postman"
"Okay"
"I swear on my Royal Mail badge mate. What you need to shift a headache is a good bottle of Vodka, that'll shift it."

"What, the whole bottle. Won't that give me alcoholic poisening?"

"No guv, safe as houses Vodka or any other spirit; make it a bottle of Scotch if you want. Oh, and a fag. But what ever you do, never ever take Asprin - it's a drug you see and very very dangerous"
I was so gratful to this Postie for saving my life, I gave him his Christmas tip a couple of months early.
"Oh and, by the way, may I know the name of the Postman that saved my life?"

"Gladly" he said, "It's Johnson, Alan Johnson"
Well all I can say to sum up is thank the Lord for Alan Johnson. Who needs Scientists when you've got Postmen like him.

Andrew InFrance

Slightly off topic, but I thought it quite a good insight into the character of Johnson that he chose to sack Professor Nutt by email. Typical of this weak bunch of back stabbers!

The Gateless Gate

Storm in a teacup, spliff in a roll?

What about more posts on Neathergate which would be far more interesting.

Where is the scientific evdidence that creating a multicultural society is always a good thing?

Joan

Perhaps you should have listened to the mother interviewed on Sky News over weekend who lost her son to drugs. And just look at the comments from parents who have experienced similar and post under Melanie Phillips' column today. A little more 'nannying' as you so disingenuosly call it and these lives might not have been ruined:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1224578/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Fatuous-dangerous-utterly-irresponsible--Nutty-professor-whos-distorting-truth-drugs.html

Michael Booth

As someone else said on another blog, New Labour are credited with creating policy-based evidence...

Peter From Maidstone

There is no reason why a politician should implement scientific advice, but in this case the politicians seem unable to explain that thgeir job IS to make political judgements, and so seem to be attacking those are presenting what seems to be neutral scientific advice. I can see that this has frustrated the scientists because it looks like their work is just being rejected (as it often is by Labour). If Johnson had welcomed the science and then explained that politics has to ask what sort of society we want to live in, (and explained that it is not one where we particularly want more drink, smoking or drugs) then he could have both accepted the science and rejected the suggestions for implementation. Now he just looks like someone it is not worth working for.

DavidDP

It's such a shame Grayling once again engaged his mouth before his brain (although the evidence is fast accruing that he lacks the latter).

Cameron has shown in the past he has the right instincts on the drugs issue. I hope he follows them through, and we can end this ridiculous era of Prohibition.

Publius

Public policy is a political question, not a question for science or, rather, for scientists.

Having said that, we all know, with the Hegelian EU, that political questions are now being replaced with the "beamtenstaat" -- i.e., administration by "experts" -- the complete antithesis of Renaissance Man.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Peter from Maidstone

Exactly.

DavidDP

"Perhaps you should have listened to the mother interviewed on Sky News over weekend who lost her son to drugs."

I'm sure it was very distressing for her and her family. But we purposely attempt to remove such emotion from policy and legislation as it can affect judgement. Children die from a lot of things. Many more young people die from alcohol poisonning and we agree that we don't punish the responsible majority for the abuse of the few by banning alcohol. Further, we realise that banning alcohol won't protect the most vulnerable and we make them prey to the criminal gangs that will rise up once the substance is made illegal. We have empirical evidence of that.

"Melanie Phillips' column today."

Which is, as usual, the knee jerk rejection of science because she doesn't understand or like what it concludes.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Joan

Care to comment on the views of people who have tragically lost their relatives to horse-riding accidents?

Nicholas

Elected politicians should either argue policy on the basis of the best expert evidence or on the basis of the majority public wish - expressed through a manifesto mandate or referenda. New Labour do neither - instead they make up policy on the basis of their own personal beliefs, values, preferences and prejudices (q.v. Blunkett, Harmon, Smith, Burham and now Johnson). They constantly confuse their ministerial roles with empowered management-style decision making which is largely unaccountable to the electorate. And don't forget most of them are ex-student Marxists.

This is why we have had such a carnival procession of intiatives, Animal Farm-type proclamations as to what is good and what is bad, with an avalanche of new legislation and regulation from New Labour. Their ministers act like feudal lords dispensing justice. A perceived problem or issue arises and they feel compelled to make a judgement and issue a sweeping proclamation ("Drinking Bad, baaa"). Inconsistency is inevitable. All too often the resultant laws and regulation miss the intended target and punish everyone else instead.

When they do engage in "public consultation" it is often determined on the basis of the result required and more often that not involves unelected bodies (ACPO) or government-funded lobby groups thinly disguised as charities or independent agencies.

New Labour has introduced a new kind of tyranny to make ordinary people feel helpless and irrelevant to their exercise of power.

Nicholas

Joan: "Perhaps you should have listened to the mother interviewed on Sky News over weekend who lost her son to drugs. And just look at the comments from parents who have experienced similar and post under Melanie Phillips' column today. A little more 'nannying' as you so disingenuosly call it and these lives might not have been ruined"

Rubbish. It is precisely that type of hysterical response to individual tragedies that has resulted in so much pointless Nannyism from this government. At the end of the day, painful though it may be for women like you to realise it, those who decide to take drugs are the architects of their own destiny. Without consumers there would be no market.

Frank P

Are you out there David Raynes? Melanie? Come on, here's something you can agree upon. Bugger the politicians and the parasitical academian spliffers calling themselves 'scientists' who are now bereft having had the tit of the milch cow snatched from their greedy ganga-stained lips. Let's have some practical common sense on this.

As for their odious comparisons: from my very lengthy observations on the results of both. I have come to a very scientific conclusion: in vino veritas, in ganga gobbledegook!

That should have unleashed the dogs of war that once closed down commentary Melanie's old blog!

Any Colour but Brown

"Publius
Having said that, we all know, with the Hegelian EU, that political questions are now being replaced with the "beamtenstaat" -- i.e., administration by "experts""

A "Beamter" is NOT an "expert", he is merely a civil servant with special privileges - like being unsackable.
Most are inexcusably bureaucratic, which is, perhaps, their only area of expertise, if any.

TrevorsDen

David DP has previously given us ample evidence of the stuff he ingests.

The notion that we should be ruled by scientists from their ivory towers is laughable. They can produce as many reports as they like - its politicians who bear the responsibility for implementing them. Johnston has shown himself to be an idiot in the way he has dealt with this.

The point of this farrago has been totally missed of course.

What a piece of hokum is announced by a scientist that the govt do not like , he gets sacked.

When idiot scientists tell the govt what it wants to know however its a different matter. Tell the govt about global warming and thus give it an excuse to tax and control us is a way to earn ever increasing grants and status.

Prof Nutt has given us an insight into the corruption and self interest of scientists.

Liz Brown

I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that there might be some truth in Common Purpose - google Brain Parrish/Common Purpose - (whom I had orignally thought to be a nutter)
It increasingly appears that all rational thought has been sacrificed by the Marxists purporting toe be the Government, with its connivance of the opposing parties and the media.........
This Govt deliberately imposed a massive immigrnation influx on us, has endeavoured social engineering on a monumental scale, has undermined our Institutions, our culture, our judicial system and our values. It has brought millions into its dependency culture with its tax credits, its devastating undermining of education and etcs
We are surveilled, bullied and are guilty of thought crimess. The list is endless
and now we have the Postman sacking a true expert who dared to speak the truth.......
finally we come to the massive global warming scam which is costing us millions based on evidence from Indian railway engineers, Political economists and millionaires
Enough - General Election now...........

Joan

DavidDP - the knee-jerk reaction is entirely yours. You haven't even read Melanie Phillips' column because if you had you would have seen the scientific sources she uses.

Chuck, I'm very sorry if people die of horse riding but it's got nothing to do with drugs.

Frank P

I jumped the gun; Melanie is already on the case in her column in the Mail. Great piece. as ever.

DavidDP

"Elected politicians should either argue policy on the basis of the best expert evidence or on the basis of the majority public wish - expressed through a manifesto mandate or referenda."

I disagree. We'd have to have insanely detailed manifestos, and to do so would not on be impractical (not to mention the cost involved) but would in my opinion unecessarily bind governments from reacting to changing circumstances. Referenda on all issues are similarly problematic, not least because it's difficult to know where to draw the line on having them and frequent use paralyses the business of government (constant campaigning will do that).

"New Labour do neither - instead they make up policy on the basis of their own personal beliefs, values, preferences and prejudices "

But this is precisey why we do elect representatives to take decisions for us, so that they can take decisions based on all of those things. We look for politicians or parties who appear to have a similar base of views, prejudices, beliefs etc to our own, and vote for them to put those into practice when taking the decisions needed to run the country.

JONNY

Sorry Joan but the comments on the Mail piece I saw was one huge debunking of the opinionated, domineering and (on this subject) vacuously ignorant Melanie.

Fergus Pickering

What science exactly was behind Nutt's remark that riding a horse was riskier than taking an e tablet? Sounds like statistics to me, and very diodgy statistics too. But then Nutt doesn't know any more about statistics than my bottom, does he? Unless he is a statistician. Is he? There is a curious idea about that a 'scientist' knows all science and should therefore be listened to with deferenceon subjects he/she knows nothing about. What is Nutt's area of expertise exactly? What is his doctorate in? I don't know. Do you? Years ago I had a tutor at university who was very good on Victorian literature. But he thought his expetise in this gave him the right to pontificate on Geoffrey Boycott's merits as a cricketer. Wrong, don't you know.

DavidDP

"a piece of hokum"

Any evidence that Dr Nutt's analysis was not rigorous and based on the facts?

Colin

The regime has previous form on this:

A good example is the Iraq war. Blair and co. decided what the answer/policy was, then set about assembling the evidence to fit the answer.

If I recall, the scientists and experts told them the following:

1. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

2. There were no links between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

3. The Iraqi military posed no threat to us.

Sadly, the scientists and experts came up with the wrong answers. As a result, and through a process of elimination, the regime unearthed a bunch of people, willing to distort, cheat, dissemble and prostitute their personal and professional integrity, to collaborate with the regime to deliver the required evidence to support the pre-ordained course of action. As we know, many of those crooks subsequently prospered.

The rest is very recent history...

DavidDP

"You haven't even read Melanie Phillips' column because if you had you would have seen the scientific sources she uses. "

I have. And as usual, Mel absolutely dismisses those arguments she doesn't like. I more honest approach would be to note that there is alternative analysis which suggests that Dr Nutt's view is not clear cut (although I believe that Nutt's research is more heavily supported). Instead, she she simply refers to Dr Nutt as fatuous, dangerous and irresponsible. An ad hominem attack (which is ironic given her post elsewhere here complaining of being subject to an ad feminam (how Harman-esque!) attack).

Colin

Fergus Pickering @10:50am

I agree with you. Only a man, with the ego of an academic could have made that comparison, with a straight face. Perhaps he'd forgotten who he was supposed to be communicating with.

I'm trying to picture a scenario where someone "graduates" from trotting round Richmond Park on the back of a Chestnut Gelding, to Heroin or Crack Cocaine.

Colin

In addition, I can see where Brown is coming from when he thinks that nobody else in the Labour party is up to the job of PM.

To think that many commentators had Johnson down as a contender. If he's one of the main runners, Brown was bang on the money.

He made a right tit of himself on the Adam Boulton program.

DavidDP

"What is Nutt's area of expertise exactly? What is his doctorate in? I don't know. Do you?"

Yes. Google is a wonderful thing.

G Larkin

> In this instance, Alan Johnson’s political decision is correct: why compound society’s drink and smoking related problems by easing the availability of narcotics?

It is VERY depressing to read your correspondent regugitating the same old worn out ideas - the statement quoted is completely incorrect as anyone who had read Dr Nutt's comments will know. Not only is there the question of increasing the cachet of certain drugs by increasing their classification but there is also considerable evidence from the Netherlands and Portugal to suggest that use decreases once a drugs such as cannabis is decriminalised.

JONNY

Quite a fan club developing here for the Corblimey Postman Laddie.

Might it possibly be that he is seen as the meaty ingredient in Verity's famous Pie in the Sky Fantasy Recipe.
The one that envisages a PM Johnson-facilitated Hung Parliament.
And all the much derided piece of political fiction that ensues.

THX1138

I see that Rod Liddle used his Sunday Times column to put the boot into Ms Phillips (sort of) and I quote"

"One particularly idiotic columnist in the Daily Mail, dismissing the statistics with an airy wave of the hand, remarked that nonetheless horse-riding was not “inherently” dangerous. I think she meant that people who ride horses tend to speak nicely and have labradors."

Unfortunately the fearless Mr Liddle who is happy to take on Governments for "sexing up dossiers" seems a little more shy when is comes to Sister Phillips.

And the idiotic column she wrote is here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1139232/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Drugs-worse-horse-riding-The-folly-experts-simply-beggars-belief.html

Alex as always talks the most sense on the drugs debate.

G Larkin

@ Fergus

> There is a curious idea about that a 'scientist' knows all science and should therefore be listened to with deferenceon subjects he/she knows nothing about. What is Nutt's area of expertise exactly? What is his doctorate in? I don't know. Do you?

Although I do know exactly why he is qualified to be in his position, you are making the assumption that he was chair of a government sponsored body on drugs misuse with no qualifications whatsoever. Don't you think your argument may be a little tissue-thin? Mind you as it suggests complete incompetence by the current government I can see how you wouldn't think it unlikely.

Any Colour but Brown

Fergus Pickering

"What science exactly was behind Nutt's remark that riding a horse was riskier than taking an e tablet?
Rephrase it to "There are more fatalities from horse-riding than from ecstacy" and you have your answer.

"Sounds like statistics to me, and very diodgy statistics too.
If you think they are "diodgy", why don't you give us your statistical analysis?

"But then Nutt doesn't know any more about statistics than my bottom, does he?"
How do you know? What qualification do you have to make that assertion?

"Unless he is a statistician. Is he?"
A person can know a lot about statistics, without being a statistician. Just as someone can know a lot about music, without being a musician - just look at the music industry for evidence of that.

"There is a curious idea about that a 'scientist' knows all science and should therefore be listened to with deferenceon subjects he/she knows nothing about."

Well, we agree on something. However, Dr Nutt has qualifications as a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Master of Arts Degree, Doctor of Medicine, Member of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Fellow of the United Kingdom Academy of Medical Sciences.

I think, he probably knows a bit more about the effects of drugs than the career politician that fired him

Publius

@Any Colour But Brown
You are quite correct about "beamten". Hence my use of quote marks around the word "experts".

Naomi Muse

Ho Hum.

Two issues here:

1. Political expediency
2. Expert opinion paid or unpaid

Political expediency is a balancing act which dictates that a muddying of the line of what is best and right is achieved in order to balance the issues of society, and more important to the government, what it wants to say.

It is Humpty Dumptyism in daily action, where words mean what they want them to mean, nothing more, nothing less.

Expert opinion is simply that. As has been found by experts called in court cases, opinion varies and experts can be called to account years after having given an opinion that is later discredited. Therefore all expert opinion should be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt, and adjudged for corroborative and contradictory opinion, as well as seeing the specific against a background of the whole.

As all the government experts must be allowed to do their day jobs, it will happen that they contradict, in part or totally, what the government says if the government solicits expert opinion and then says, 'kindly allow me to know better'. 'tis the consequence of deciding what is right before taking the expert opinion.

For the postman to have reacted so violently, so quickly, means that he judged it wrongly and thought the unpaid expert was being 'disloyal' to him, which he clearly wasn't - he was just stating an opinion in the context of a lecture or speech.

Ken

Andrew InFrance:
Ironic that.
As a former postie you'd think he'd support traditional letter writing.
Wonder if his former colleagues, the striking posties, read anything into his email betrayal?

Victor Southern

Evidently we must accede to rule by technocrats. Unelected but their will must be done. I hold no brief for Alan Johnson or his actions or his explosion or for the Labour party. The simple fact is that this is our elected government and Professor Nutt or even Dr. Doolittle are not.

Hands up those who can remember so long ago when the government's scientific advisers told us that a SAARS epidemic was coming and that 300,000 deaths were to be expected. The government was said to be planning mass graves.

Even further back and the best scientific opinion was that we should not inoculate cattle against Foot and Mouth but slaughter and burn them.

In 10 years we we will be able to look back with some wry scorn at the scientific inevitability of man-made global warming just as some of us can remember 1976 when it was the scientific consensus that we were about to enter a new ice age.

Fergus Pickering

David DP. Ah! Knows bugger all about statistics then? Or horses riding of. Or politics, practising of.

Joan

DavidDP: "as usual, Mel absolutely dismisses those arguments she doesn't like."

No, she doesn't, she refers to the findings of another scientist.

"she simply refers to Dr Nutt as fatuous, dangerous and irresponsible. An ad hominem attack".

What a complete falsehood! She never made an attack on the person.

What she wrote was: "It is hard to think of a more irresponsible position for a governmental drug adviser." and "This fatuous argument was shredded by one of the country's leading experts on ecstasy, Professor Andrew Parrott." How do those statements amount to an attack on the person?

You have simply taken the headline - something never written by the journalist - and said that this is what she said.

What have you been smoking?

DavidDP

"Ah! Knows bugger all about statistics then?"

In my experience, scientists sufficiently advanced in their career do tend to have at least an elementary knowledge of statistical analysis as much of their work will involve it at some level or another.

"Or horses riding of."
Not sure why he would actually need to know about horse riding. All he would need is the relevant statistics relating to it.

"Or politics, practising of."

He makes no pretence at being a politician, as far as I can see. He was engaged to present evidence, and did so.

Peter

Joan - Melanie Phillips was writing drivel, as she often does. And focussing on a mother whose child died is irrelevant. If we extended your argument we would ban every activity because a few people died participating in it.

Drug related deaths kill very few people compared to the deaths from smoking and alcohol.

Johnson's fury was because someone with rather more brain cells than he has, had the temerity to refuse to accept dictats from this wretched government. Oh, that many more will follow the good Professor's lead. He is an example to all of us who are sick of control freakery and incessant state nannying.

ChrisP

Where is the sense in posturing on drug use. It would take a bold politician to do the right thing. Don't punish the users. Help them like we do with Fags and Booze. It should be legalised and taxed because you will never stop people using. In fact if it wasnt illegal I bet a lot of people wouldnt use.
How can you police something like this - where someone uses in their own home and no-one is being harmed.

I note the comparison with the impossible to police hunting ban, which I also think should be gotten rid of - why have laws when you cant enforce them?

Verity

Andrew in France – “quite a good insight into the character of Johnson that he chose to sack Professor Nutt by email.” Yes. Very cowardly and utterly infra dig. David Cameron sacked Patrick Mercer over his cellphone.

Liz Brown recommends googling Brain Parrish for information on Common Purpose. I believe she means Brian Gerrish. For the record, he’s a former naval officer and seems to have his head screwed on just right.

DavidDP

"How do those statements amount to an attack on the person? "

Because the arguments are not based on any substantive issues with the results. Calling the results irresponsible and fatuous is effectively ad hominem, since the words quite clearly relate to the person behind them.

Mel noting other scientists does not take away from that.

Feste

Advisers advise, governments decide. Fair enough, but we are entitled to know what the scientific advice was, and it is up to politicians to explain what other considerations trump the advice they have received when they decide to ignore it.

Tiberius

Has anyone ever seen Alan Johnson and Alan Curbishley in the same room?

Joan

"a mother whose child died is irrelevant" - oh, so much for relying on evidence.

Put the body under the carpet, why don't you?

Dixon

I believe all drugs should be deregulated. HOWEVER: The problem with Nutt and co is that they dont seem to understand the implications of their argument.

If we were to accept that because Nutt thinks X is more dangerous than Y we must treat X use more severely than Y use ( his position as he stated it on TV ) this PRESUPPOSES the possible outcomes of paralell debates affecting policy other than simply the very narrow question of whether X is more harmful than Y.It ignores all questions of a moral ( if you are religious ), ethical, practical, social, economic, cultural and even aesthetic nature, presupposing to be irrelevant. Which they are not. Nutt and his kind are quite manifestly guilty of a degree of tunnel-vision and mono-mania that is tantamount to Aspergers syndrome if not full-blown autism. They can see nothing but their answer to one very narrowly defined technical question and moronically assume that question, because it is their province, to be the only question in the world that matters.

Anne Allan

I cannot believe I am writing this - but with a marked lack of enthusiasm - I have to defend Alan Johnson.
Prof. Nutt may have every letter in the alphabet after his name, but on this occasion he was acting as an adviser to a politician, and politicians have to take into consideration factors other than just scientific analysis.
The Prof. is perfectly entitled to his opinion, but he should have the common courtesy to resign his position as an adviser before he goes public with them. On a more cynical note, I could point out that the track record of experts in any field has not been an unalloyed success; think millions of healthy cloven hoofed animals going up in smoke, the great bird flu pandemic or housing the peasants in high rise ghettos.
And if it is true that the sacking was done by email, then I think both sides have failed when it comes to good manners.

Fergus Pickering

If he had an elementary knowledge of statistics he would not compare horse-riding with drug-taking. His cavalier use of statistics has been remarked on by other academics in the field (who do not agree with his findings). Here is something off the top of my head. I grant that it may be possible to make an estimate of the number of horse-riders in the country but it is, I assert, quite impossible to know the number of people who have taken ecstasy. How would you begin to make an estimate? All young people betweeen he ages of 14 and 25? Half? A quarter? One per cent? It's a guesstimate, isn't it? Or are you simply saying that ten people have died from taking ecstasy and twenty from riding horses and therefore... Surely you can see this is fatuous. On this basis pedestrianism wouold be the most risky form of movement from place to place.

Joan

David DP, we'll try again. An ad hominem argument is an attack on a person. All that Melanie Phillips' attacked was an "irresponsible position" and a "fatuous argument".

You're wriggling about doesn't suddenly morph that language into an attack on the person.

And you dare to talk about people misrepresenting the facts - you're a past master at it.

Dixon

How mamy of the commentors here who side with Nutt are the same voices at the Spectator against climate change hysteria?

Dont you see that it is the Nutts of this world who have created the latter.

Britain doesnt suffer from a lack of "expert" advice but the results of decades of slavishly following such advice...in education, law-enforcement, medicine, child-protection, urban-planning,immigration, etc, etc, etc.

If you want to know where policy determined by "experts" leads, look at the state of Britain today.

Alexandrovich

Some of us are pro drugs, some of us anti.
That's about it. However, what grates most of all is the 'Don't you know who I am? I'm a scientist!' attitude.
Like Ian Blair today on the Jeremy Vine Show: when told that many people would like to see a return to 'Life on Mars' policing he replied "We don't want to have the tyranny of the majority."
Sounds like Alex's response to Neathergate.

DavidDP

"And you dare to talk about people misrepresenting the facts - you're a past master at it."

That's the second personal attack on me by you. I wonder why.

Attacking arguments as simply irrepsonsible and fatuous are effectively ad hominem attacks. They go directly to the person making the argument, without addressing any of the substantive issues.

As to your point about the grieving mother, with respect she (or rather her daughter) is one piece of evidence that must be weighed in context with many others. One does not, of course dismiss hers or the deaths of an others, but when judging how dangerous something is, far more mut be looked at. The mother herself will obviously be affected by the death of her daughter, and could not be described as impartial.

Fergus,

I of course do not know the various statistical data that Dr Nutt made his claim on, but there does need to be more to arguing against him that a "feeling" that what he says is a guestimate, or that, without evidence to the contrary, he has no working knowledge of statistics.

It may of course be true that the example was a poor one to use, even if true, although Dr Nutt's remit was to look at harm and therefore comparators like that can be useful illustratively to the lay audience.

Any Colour but Brown

Since my last post, I have read David Nutt's paper. He gave it first in July of this year, so the content is not new.
His horse-riding analogy has been taken wholly out of context and it is obvious that no-one, who has posted here, has read the paper, otherwise some of the comments wouldn't have been made. It was, originally made in the context of biased reporting in the MSM of drug-related deaths. Out of 30 deaths, due to cocaine, for example, only 4 were reported in the press, but 26 out of 28 ecstacy deaths were reported. His comment was taking a shot at the MSM.

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/estimatingdrugharms.html

Martyn Rowe

Regardless of this Nutt/Johnson argument, politicians need to go back to the drawing board with drugs, and completely change the classification system. Kids take no notice of the laws, the classifications or the illegality - drugs are a part of their lives, and they know the drill better than any politician (or most parents).

I live in an area where loads of people take drugs, and they are a happy addition to social lives. But there are recreational drugs and there are lifestyle drugs. Lifestyle drugs such as heroin and crack are barbiturates such as valium are highly addictive and tend to be used by people with addictive personalities/dross lives and are used daily - therefore they are a massive problem.

But recreational drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and speed are widely used by youngsters, mainly on weekends or when they go out to a pub/club or party. The people who use them aren't criminals or bad people - they take the drugs because they are fun and add to a good night out.

Are these drugs completely ruining their health, or their minds? Will they shorten lives? Who knows, and frankly, who cares? For some people, a good weekend out is all they have to look forward to. Why make unenforcable laws at their expense?

Marijuana is probably worse than ecstasy or coke in some ways because people who smoke marijuana tend to smoke it every day. Ecstasy users might take it once a fortnight, if that. After years of marijuana use it clearly has an effect, it makes the user lazy, apathetic and affects the memory. I know this because loads of my friends smoke it. But again, so what? They are adults, and they choose to do it. They harm no-one but themselves. All this tabloid talk of psychosis etc is bullsh*t. Marijuana doesn't make people dangerous - it's tosh.

And ecstasy isn't particularly dangerous. It costs £1.50 for God's sake - killer poisons surely cost more than that! It's killed about 50 people in the last five years. How many people has booze killed? I'd much rather take ecstasy that down half a bottle of whiskey.

But at 32, I don't take anything anymore. Why? Because I've grown out of it, not because it's against the law. I also choose to drink a lot less than I once did. I've got older, settled down. I know people who took loads of drugs as youngsters and are now older, settled into decent jobs and have families - they are fine.

The whole spectre of 'drugs' needs to be better understood by people in politics, in the media and in academia. Prohibition is a joke - I could buy all of the drugs named above within an hour, just with a few phone calls. Drugs are everwhere. The only reason they are illegal is because cosy people in their cosy homes are worried that legalisation will mean the UK goes further towards hell in its handcart.

It is nonsense.

Prohibition has zero effect on drug use in this country.

Peter

Joan

You are either being silly or disingenuous - or both. One person's account of the death of their child is irrelevant to the global argument ( other than to tug at the emotions ) , as I went on to discuss in my post.

Quite apart from the arguments about individuals' responsibilities you cannot argue from the specific to the general and back. The pain of one death cannot determine a policy.

Joan

"And you dare to talk about people misrepresenting the facts - you're a past master at it."

"That's the second personal attack on me by you." No, that's not an ad hominem attack on you. That's me just pointing out that you misrepresented what Melanie Phillips put in her column.

"Attacking arguments as simply irrepsonsible and fatuous are effectively ad hominem attacks." What total BS!

They're not ad hominem attacks but thanks to your warped opinion they're "effectively" ad hominem attacks.

mac

Hmm, "experts" . . . What Anne Allan and Dixon said above.

Poor handling by Johnson, but was the sacking actually his own initiative, or on orders from the Bunker?

Frank P

Nutt wears green spectacles. WTF else do you need to know about him?

john miller

Of course, the obvious conclusion to all this is that Nutter isn't much of a scientist and Johnson isn't much of a politician, which is why they teamed up in the first place.

Comparing drugs to horse riding is a fatuous stance which is not worthy of debate. Equally, to lose your rag in an interview because you are too thick to argue your position is pathetic.

Both the quasi scientist and the quasi politician should shut up and let some grown ups into the room.

Frank P

And Johnson is playing Mr 'ard man as a vote catching ploy. They deserve each other. Parents struggling with teenage eruptions don't need either. As for 'mass walkouts'. Why are a mass of pseudo-scientists deployed on this subject anyway? Let the police and the courts do their job and enforce the laws of the land without the hindrance of politics, cod science, sociologists and criminologists - and offenders would then know where they stood.

Break the law once: a hefty fine. Twice: porridge. Deal in it and we throw away the key. And ostracism accompanies all three outcomes, rather than sympathy and mollycoddling that pervades now. Successive governments have brought this on themselves; in fact a large minority of the current politicians are been users themselves. That's why many of them have moved to Notting Hill, to be closer to their pushers.

Dame DeVille

As I have smoked Hashish for about 30 years I guess I can offer some evidence-based policy advice here.

I have never really taken the illegality of smoking a spliff into account nor have I found that there is ever any difficulty or expense in obtaining a few joints worth.

Recently I note that the market has offered-up more of the milder Moroccan pollens as consumers eschew the stronger skunks and other hybrids (much as a drinker might lay off the scotch and stick to beer) and very good value it is too, cheap indeed. To meet demand the stuff must come in by container loads - hundreds of tons of it. Many people in Morocco will be gainfully employed in this business, making hash a craft long practiced in North Africa!

Quite why this is of any interest to those who don't want to smoke hashish I don't really know. I guess I ought to cut down a bit but I tie down a good job and live a pretty full life - most of us have our vices, hash is mine!

I have no interest in any other 'drugs' although I like a pint now and then, I have never seen any evidence in myself or my friends of this 'gateway' drug effect they talk about.

Some folks just seem to have a (sometimes destructive) urge to take stuff to excess, whatever it might be. Ban everything and some folks will still do stuff like sniff glue, gather wild magic mushrooms, grow hemp or distill their own liquor.

Hashish is a natural product made from a common (and useful) hemp plant manufactured by an ancient technique and apart from feeling pleasant has many medicinal properties.

And any statement about 'drugs' is meaningless - what drug(s) there are so many and they have such a range of effects and risks that just to say 'drugs' is an ignorant rubbish cop-out.

Any idea that 'banning' will stop people taking too much of the wrong stuff or combinations is proven to be a wrong idea - it is all banned now! The trouble with an illegal trade that is impossible to stop is that in reality you abdicate all control - same argument as abortions (ban them and you get 'back-street' abortions).

Hash should be legal - completely legal, but sold and taxed in a regulated market. Based on both evidence and usage many other 'drugs' should be treated likewise. Legalize this business and you remove the basis of most of our crime and I can quietly enjoy my relaxing after-work after-gym spliff - thanks!

Fergus Pickering Ph effing d.

Oh God. I said it was a guesstimate because it can't be anything else. Nobody, ebven a professor in green spectacles with ever so many letters after his name can know this. It is, like the nature of God, effing unknowable. And as for that patronising stuff about 'a lay audience', do you know what Bernard Shaw said? 'All professions are conspiracies against the laiety'. Too right, sport. The comparison is no bloody good to a lay audience, or any audience that isn't bollock stupid. For the reasons I put forward, none of which you seem to understand.

J H Holloway

A Scottish Prof on the WOTO this lunch time took Nutt to pieces in a calm, dispassionate way.

Nutt and the advisory panel, it seems, have a record of jumping to the wrong conclusion and have had to retract and accept they were wrong on at least three occasions over the last few years.

I'd advise everyone to find today's WOTO and listen to the real story.

2trueblue

Clearly neither man knows how to conduct themselves correctly.

Expert opinion does not mean it is the last word on anything, just what is accepted at that time. Sometimes it is just fashion.

There are those who want these drugs legalised, and those who do not.
I visited mental health wards for years and each weekend young men, mostly, were admitted after parties and it was the beginning of their problems with drugs. Whether they would have found another addiction to follow their use of cannabis, etc., or not, who knows, but they did not benefit from taking them and their lives were not enhanced from their use, or addiction. On that basis alone 'one size does not fit all'. Medical opinion on lots of medicines has changed and I can accept that. Personally I cannot agree that sending the message that so called recreational drugs are ok is seriously flawed.

Avudale

I agree with the moral stance that allowing for the increased availability of intoxicants or narcotics should not be encouraged by legalisation, if one is to accept the view that any intoxication is a moral wrong. That is a philosophical point, as the evidence of humanity's decision to intoxicate oneself is clear for time immemorial, and the choice to alter one's perception is an individual one.

However, the "stick" mentality of criminalizing those who choose to alter their perception is where the current state of drugs laws fall down.

Making criminals of the - literally - millions of people who indulge in the odd spliff every now and then is absurd, and does nothing to increase the relationship of the public with the governing body.

Obtaining a criminal record for possessing some cannabis does far more harm to an individual than the drug itself, as evidenced by the relatively benign nature of the wacky baccy that Professor Nutt and the scientific community have demonstrated.

By all means advise persons who wish to consume such intoxicants of the potential side effects and downsides, as is done with alcohol and tobacco today. But giving people criminal records is manifestly wrong and damaging, potentially life-threatening.

David Raynes

Frank P
Yes I am out there. My fingerprints are all sadly over removing Professor Nutt since I was the first to call for him to consider his position or for government to do it for him.

Professor Nutt has, dishonestly in my view, misepresented the debate about cannabis as a black or white view in order to justify his position. It is in fact shades of grey. Nutt has been proselytising about drugs, an action that is incompatible with his former role.

The decision about cannabis was about putting cannabis back where it historically was before David Blunkett downgraded it. The classification had become totemic for people on both sides of the cannabis debate. Personally I think classification as advice to users(as against priority advice to law enforcement and the courts) is heavily overdone. I prefer a system in which drugs are either legal or illegal but that is not where we are.

I attended the ACMD open hearing on cannabis, Professor Nutt does not represent honestly to the public, the range of debate. The National Director Of Mental Health Professor Louis Appleby was one of those who clearly wanted cannabis put back to B, there are many other such scientists. Professor Murray -the expert on psychosis, said on World at 1, that Nutt played "fast & loose" with the statistics. Well exactly. At the ACMD there was an attempt to rig some of what was said, the importation of arch legaliser, Professor Simon Lenton from Australia to speak to the public and the ACMD. I spoke to Lenton afterwards, he wants changes to the UN conventions. I also established that Lenton's visit to the UK was (quite remarkably) paid for by the UK tax payer-someone fixed that! I have my suspicions as to who that was.

Now what of the ACMD itself? Professor Nutt was almost stunned when the fact that the ACMD was not unanimous on the issue was put to him on News 24, not a position that he had been telling the public. If the ACMD was not unanimous and many other academics were seeing the case differrently what was the Government to do? It HAD to err on the side of caution so it was right to reclassify.

Government is very aware of the damge being done to the UK population by drugs use and particularly cannabis-remember Blair's feral youth? Kids who use cannabis on the way to school, at school and on the way home become unteachable, they become unable to plan or look far beyond the next joint, that is even if they do not succumb to diagnosable mental illness.

What of Professor Nutt's own position? Well he justifies himself by saying the scientists were all agreed, but they only reperesent a small portion of the over 30 voices on the ACMD. The GP representative who sees drugs problems on the front line, has spoken out and says she does not support NUTT. Nutt himself was not even Chairman when the cannabis review was done, it was Sir Micahel Rawlins, so Nutt's own vote carried no more weight than that of any other member. He is not even himself an expert on the effects of cannabis OR of Ecstasy. Why are we to believe in his omnipotence on this issue?

Nutt has ignored, in his public utterances since being dismissed, the important change in the nature of cannabis (of which the Home Office must be aware). Home grown cannabis is now dominating the market, this contains less or no CBD, a chemical that we heard at the ACMD may be an anti psychotic and may, when present in roughly equal proportions with THC, defend against brain damgeg. I argue that not only (to quote Murray) is Nutt playing fast & loose with the statistics, he is playing fast & loose with the science. He has personally tinkered with the idea of legalisation (in a Radio Broadcast in New Zealand-it can be found using Google) which I brought to public and Home Office attention. Yesterday he admitted to drug use himself (in the Telegraph interview). It seems that the Professor is one of a generation who justify liberalisation because of his own earlier folly.

Langauge matters in the drugs debate because there is a new generation of potential drugs users along every year. They make their decisions to use any drug for the first time against the backdrop of culture and comment. Professor Nutt by his many unwise statements has been affecting that culture and even revelling in the notoriety. Alan Johnson was right to relieve him of his position, of course the Home Office had lost confidence in him and because the Professor cannot shut up we will all see his real colours in coming months.

The circling of scientific wagons against what is perceived as an external enemy is sadly misjudged, mostly by people who have no idea of the detailed science themselves.

Scientists are not always right, judgements about drugs are not JUST a matter of science, relationships between various drugs and the possible harms are not susceptible to the spurious accuracy that Nutt claims. His Brave New World (subscribed to by a few other fellow scientific travellers who cannot get their way) where scientists decide everything, independent of government and no one else has a valid opinion, is a sort of madness. The emperor has no clothes.

Ross

Is this a deliberate joke? Do you know that 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' is the title of a book about the history of cannabis prohibition? It can be found on-line for anyone who is interested.

What upsets and angers many people is the double standard that allows tobacco and alcohol to be legal despite all the harm they do and notwithstanding harm reduction initiatives like banning smoking in public, which came about through safety in the work place rather than concern for public health per se.

If all three were illegal then the moral debate would end and society could concentrate on draconian law enforcement and Al Capone type criminals could make money freely.

The 'this is where we are' argument that says just because cannabis may not be as harmful as alcohol and tobacco but it's too late to change now is threadbare and an abdication of responsibility.

It is clear that using cannabis is a political crime pure and simple because politicians have made it so.

It is also clear that because no one truly knows how many people use cannabis moderately without harm to themselves or others and that because the media's hysteria that drugs are 'bad' we have a circular argument that goes 'why is cannabis bad? - because it's illegal. Why is it illegal? - because it's bad' which serves no one well.

The final irony is that prohibition does not seem to be stopping those who want to from consuming cannabis.

We like to think of ourselves as rational mature and sensible - there is not much evidence (scientific or otherwise) of that around is there?