Ecstasy and the Agony that is Jacqui Smith

So the government is going to reject advice that Ecstasy be reclassified as a Class B drug. No surprise there. Got to adopt a tough stance on these matters, you know. Not that the penalties for possession of a Class B drug are anything other than absurdly draconian themselves: you can still be locked away for five years or, for the crime of selling a drug to your friends, receive as many as 14 years imprisonment. This does not seem a lenient approach to me.

Meanwhile, a government expert makes the obviously true point that more people are killed horse-riding each year than as a result of taking Ecstasy and that this sort of statistic should encourage one to reassess how we approach risk and, you know, life. This, naturally, produces a witless response from the Home Secretary:

Professor Nutt’s article, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology last week, said: “Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life.