Drug adviser asked to resign after comments
Updated on 30 October 2009
The government's chief drug advisor David Nutt is "extremely disappointed" after being asked to leave for claims that cannabis, ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes.
Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, sparked outrage earlier this week after he criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug.
It is understood Home Secretary Alan Johnson asked him to consider his position in the wake of the comments, saying he had "no confidence" in him.
Speaking to Sky News, Prof Nutt said he was disappointed by the decision but linked it to "political" considerations.
He said: "It's unusual political times, I suppose, elections and all that. It's disappointing.
"But politics is politics and science is science and there's a bit of a tension between them sometimes."
Prof Nutt attacked politicians for "misleading" the public saying, "My view is policy should be based on evidence and I would have thought most politicians, when they have a chance to make policy based on evidence, that would actually be something they would enjoy doing.
"It's a bit odd to make policy that goes in the face of evidence."
"The danger is they are misleading us. The scientific evidence is there, it's in all the reports we published.
"Our judgments about the classification of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy have been based on a great deal of very detailed scientific appraisal.
"To say that there should be different classifications to send messages - I find this very confusing."
He said cannabis was "not that harmful" a drug and repeated his warning to parents about the impact of alcohol on their children.
"My children are much more likely to die or be seriously injured from alcohol than any of those other drugs.
"The greatest concern to parents should be that their children do not get completely off their heads with alcohol because it can kill them ... and it leads them to do things which are very dangerous like kill themselves or others in cars, get into fights ... get raped, engage in other activities which they regret subsequently.
"My view is that if you want to reduce the harm to society from drugs, alcohol is the drug to target at present and all parents should be very aware of that."
Drug lecture
In a lecture and briefing paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College, London, Prof Nutt attacked what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs.
He accused former home secretary Jacqui Smith, who reclassified cannabis, of "distorting and devaluing" scientific research.
Prof Nutt said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness.
And he claimed advocates of moving ecstasy into class B from class A had "won the intellectual argument".
All drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, should be ranked by a "harm" index, he said, with alcohol coming fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates, and methadone.
Tobacco should rank ninth, ahead of cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, he said.
He also repeated his claim that the risks of taking ecstasy are no worse than riding a horse.
Ms Smith's decision to reclassify cannabis as a "precautionary step" sent mixed messages and undermined public faith in government science, he said.
He added: "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 are probably wrong."
