Want to be chief drugs advisor to the government?  Be supposedly hired to give your transparent opinion both publicly and privately and then be sacked abruptly for it?  Why not work for Alan Johnson, in an organisation where it seems having an advisory panel is more of a ‘we’re serious, look at our scientists’ gesture than a genuine attempt to discuss evidence rationally.

No one denies that cannabis, the government message and its classification are very serious and complicated matters. What is shocking is the response to criticism from Professor David Nutt, former head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, on the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C. Johnson sacked Nutt, without any serious scientific debate. In Nutt’s own words, ‘Scientists should be challenging. But obviously he didn’t feel like being challenged.’ Johnson and those associated with his government are unwittingly sending the message that advice based on factual scientific evidence rather than political consideration can cost you your job. 

A Home Office spokesman accused Nutt of not giving the public ‘clear messages about the dangers of drugs’. Nutt said that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and also said that smoking cannabis created only a ‘relatively small risk’ of psychotic illness. That is clear enough to me. The Home Office have not responded by producing a clearer message about these dangers.

The following are incredibly unclear: if decisions about drug classification are not based on science, then what exactly are the other criteria? What is wrong with being criticised publically if you want the public to be completely transparent about how your scientific advisor’s opinions affect policy?  Labour seems to think it more important to show a deceitful united front than to have a credible and unbiased voice who disagrees if the science says so.