(AP) – 19 minutes ago

LONDON — Britain's top drug adviser was fired Friday after saying that marijuana, Ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

David Nutt's comments have embarrassed the British government, which moved to toughen the penalties for possessing marijuana earlier this year despite protests from the British scientific community, which said the move was unjustified.

Nutt said he was disappointed by the move, telling Sky News television that it might have something to do with the upcoming general election, which must be called by the middle of next year.

"But politics is politics and science is science and there's a bit of a tension between them sometime," he told the broadcaster by telephone.

Britain's Home Office confirmed that Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology, had been asked to resign and said it would be seeking a replacement shortly.

Nutt's views on marijuana have long been known. He made similar comments in a 2007 piece published in prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet.

But in a recent lecture for the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College in London, Nutt accused former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of "distorting and devaluing" research. He said Smith's decision to tighten restrictions on marijuana as a precautionary step had undermined public faith in government science.

"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," he said.

"If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."
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While I can't say I'm overly surprised by our friends across the pond, I am without a doubt quite upset that governments continue to blatantly ignore scientific evidence and push their agendas of prohibition on the backs of forced resignations and sham investigations into the efficacy of incredibly beneficial substances. The fact that the rights to use alcohol and tobacco remain a part of international society, despite their relatively huge health and social risks while much safer but socially taboo substances are kept underground makes me sick.

I'm not gonna waste time writing too much. Whats the point?

The Govt will do whatever they can to keep all the alcohol fat-cats happy....and our favorite choice of herbs illegal..

WE know the Truth but i doubt that the rest of the herd (the uk population) ever will

Its a fucked up world

"A bit of tension" ? Politics is a concept beyond reason. Where science at least tries to liberate the mind, politics tries to control the mind. And both fail.

I don't see why we bother with scientists in the creation of drug policy, we don't listen to their advice. Why don't we ask all of them to vacate their posts and replace them with civil servants who will tell us the answers we want to hear?

To sustain the illusion of a civilised society, driven by reason. Crowd control, basically.

Sounds like that's exactly what they are doing....


WS

The police will just have to keep wasting their time then. It's odd though, I know of no person who has strong views against cannabis other than the fact it's illegal.

Every country has similar problems. Facts, popularity or money? Well, in politics, when running for office it's always popularity, then facts, then money. But when they're in office it’s the reverse order.

Alcohol makes a lot of money. The business of making alcohol is a long time part of the economic structure of many countries. The prime reason for government is to protect a country’s wealth, land owned, etc., and not to actually protect the people. They give us the impression that they are there to product us, but this is just to keep us happy. Governments do as little as they can for their people. Their main objective is to maintain power and wealth.

Imagine if LSD were to be made legal. LSD is so potent that a few people could make enough LSD for the entire world. You wouldn’t need all the wineries, all the vineyards, etc., they could all be replaced with just a few people. This would be economic disaster. If something like LSD was to replace alcohol overnight it would be a catastrophe for the economic structures in place. Thousands would lose their jobs. The government looks at this and values this more than the evidence that alcohol is more damaging than psychedelics.

You have to understand that if you suddenly knocked out the alcohol industry, that many governments would nearly collapse. The USA tried to make alcohol illegal many years ago and it nearly destroyed the country. No government wants to repeat that mess again.

It’s all about money and nothing else. Alcohol is big business and very much afraid of what damage LSD could do to their sales. If LSD were legal, a single dose could be sold for about $0.01. That’s far cheaper than a can of beer. There is NO WAY the alcohol industry could compete with that. No way. If all the young people started turning to LSD instead of beer because of the cost, there’s nothing the alcohol industry could do to get their customers back. Alcohol is more expensive, more toxic, more unhealthy. Believe me, they are deadly afraid of things like LSD.

soulfood- great point!

Ron- Also a great post. Its the same with Tobacco v weed. Weed can be grown at next to no cost. Tobacco gets people addicted and brings in the Gov't millions of pounds...

It's all about money and control

Good point about alcohol's business model. LSD isn't really the kind of thing that would replace alcohol in most settings (like cannabis would), but offering people other mind-altering substances will definitely eat into that market share. However, if alcohol industry suffers because of low demand, that won't cause nearly the problems that we had during prohibition, when demand was high, supply was low, and the producers were all heavily involved in organized crime.

What about showing him our support for speaking the truth?

Head of department: Professor David Nutt
Telephone: (0117) 331 3143 or 331 3178
David.J.Nutt@bristol.ac.uk

God that is what is so insane about LSD...Hte whole world could be dosed no problem!
Same with salvinorin A probabily...
I wonder if anyone is synthing salvinorin since it's legal n so many places..

I wouldn't want that at all. Everybody dosed up on... sounds terrible.

I emailed the guy and thanked him, he seemed happy for the support.

I encourage all of you to email him as well and thank him!

They haven't learned much from iraq. The same model here: "i want proof that X is bad, show me research data that proof my right of make them up". If they won't do it, fire them or discredit them.

Maybe leadership is the ultimate psychedelic, since apparently it can melt away the barriers between facts and fantasy.

Nah, the former is a result of the latter. Honesty = Equality.

I support this Idea

I sent him an email and I think he really appreciated it. I encourage everyone here to do the same!

http://www.guardian.co.u...-nutt-gordon-brown-drugs

I wouldn't worry about contacting him, he has support. The Guardian is a well-respected paper.

This government will not survive the next election (unfortunately that means the right-of-centre will be in power again, instead of the, um, centre).

There are different kinds of support. It's always nice to hear, that you don't only have the backing of a major newspaper but "common folks".

The whole story is a bad joke. And the joke just gets better (or worse, either way).

The "grounds" under which his resignation was accepted (he actually resigned instead of being sacked, but I am more likely to believe that he was forced to resign) is that he mixed politics (this means disputing of his Party's and Governments positions, nice one here) with Science (accepting the facts and data of the scientific community).

god how much we like these jokes. If it was not for government(s) we'd be grumpy and miserable.