THE sacking of Britain’s top drug adviser should give cause for concern. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was dismissed by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after the professor wrote a paper questioning the “artificial” separation of alcohol and tobacco from illegal drugs.
As far as I can see, there are two major questions here. One is about whether or not Prof Nutt is correct in his analysis; the other is about whether or not an independent adviser should be sacked for expressing an independent opinion.
Prof Nutt’s 31-strong council was appointed to advise the government on drugs policy. So what was it that Prof Nutt said that caused the home secretary to reach for his axe? He wrote a paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London that questioned the current orthodoxy that illegal drugs should be considered on their own, rather than as part of a spectrum.
Prof Nutt has argued that all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, should be ranked by a “harm” index, with alcohol coming fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates and methadone. According to Prof Nutt, tobacco should rank ninth, ahead of cannabis, LSD and ecstasy.
Keith Vaz, who chairs the home affairs select committee, described Prof Nutt's comments as “unwise”. Mr Vaz said: “As the country's top adviser on the issue, he is implying to many young people that cannabis is not particularly dangerous.”
Is Mr Vaz correct? I don’t think so. As far as I can see, Prof Nutt has never said that the use of cannabis is OK. What he has argued is that alcohol and tobacco cause more problems for individuals and communities than cannabis does.
The evidence which supports Prof Nutt’s position isn’t locked away in secret filing cabinets. It’s all around us, in cancer wards and town centres.
Smoking kills. The jury is not “out” on this; the scientific verdict has been in for a few years and it says unequivocally that tobacco is one of the biggest killers in modern life. It destroys individuals and families. And the effects of tobacco cost the public purse millions of pounds.
Put it this way: If, when Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco to these shores, Britain had known what it knows now, would tobacco have been allowed into the country? This question is what people nowadays call “a no-brainer”. In other words, it would have taken less than five minutes to issue a ban.
Tobacco would have been declared an illegal substance, and the people who produced and distributed it would have been prosecuted. It’s interesting that since smoking became so unpopular and was subject to a ban in public places – the best piece of government legislation in decades – the tobacco companies have been targeting the developing countries, which have far fewer regulations; even although they know that smoking kills.
As far as alcohol is concerned, it is Scotland’s No. 1 social problem. Ask the police. Look around your town centre on weekends. Check the medical statistics.
When used responsibly, alcohol is a social good. It helps people chill out, and feel better. It’s a relaxant which particularly helps shy people. The trouble is that when the drug we know as alcohol moves from being socially helpful to being an addictive need, it becomes destructive.
I’ll bet all of us know of at least one person whose promising career has been wrecked when booze has got the upper hand.
Marriages have been wrecked. Domestic violence has been linked to alcohol abuse. Frightened spouses and children have feared the return home of a drunken spouse or parent.
The incidence of rape has also been linked to drink, as has the continual rise in numbers of teenage pregnancies.
Driving while under the influence of drink has led to the slaughter or maiming of many people. Once people are addicted to booze, they simply have to have it, no matter the human wreckage. Anyone who doubts this should pay a visit to the accident and emergency unit of any big hospital.
Knife crime is fuelled by alcohol. Sometimes, drunken victims assault hospital staff.
What is ridiculous is that drinks companies are able to issue adverts which equate drinking with “living fully”. What a lie. The advertisements show people enjoying themselves, glass in hand, but never show the human costs. The actors in the commercials are never filmed in the midst of town-centre mayhem, or engaged in domestic abuse.
Yet alcohol is a perfectly legal drug, freely available.
How many people have you heard about who have murdered someone because of inhaling cannabis? How many town-centre riots have been caused by using the drug?
Alcohol is way ahead of cannabis or LSD or ecstasy in terms of damage. This is not at all to say that cannabis is a great thing. Some studies have shown brain deterioration and liability to paranoia.
We know that ecstasy can kill people under certain circumstances. No one could argue that it is free from danger. Far from it. But booze, statistically, is in a league of its own. Smoking tobacco is more of a danger to health than inhaling cannabis.
These are facts. What Prof Nutt has been doing is pointing out these facts. In other words, he is right to deal in evidence. That’s precisely what an advisory group should do.
So was the home secretary right to dismiss Prof Nutt? No.
The role of an independent advisory group is to provide the necessary facts on which proper judgments can be made, whether that suits the government’s political agenda or not.
The government doesn’t want to be seen to be soft on drugs. It knows that the Conservatives would make political capital if this perception were around. But if the whole drug situation is to be tackled adequately, the government’s strategy has to come out of the available evidence, not out of some fantasy.
Prof Nutt has said, correctly, that illegal drugs are a problem, but alcohol and tobacco need priority strategies, because they are linked with damage to individuals and communities on a vaster scale.
Shooting the messenger is no solution at all.