What can we do to change the minds of decision makers and people in general to actually do something about preparing for the forthcoming economic/energy crises (the ones after this one!)?
In a letter, the home secretary wrote: "I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD.
In other words, if the science doesn't agree with policy, he loses confidence in the science!
Actually, in this morning's Radio 4 interview, Prof David Nutt made it pretty clear that he laid the blame on Brown rather than Johson. It was rather fun the way the Beeb also had David King, former Chief Scientist, on, seemingly to present the other side of the case. Then all he did was point out where Nutt had overstepped the mark to get sacked but basically backing him to the hilt.
The principles goes far beyond the immediate business of drug categories, being all about government attitude to science and whether policy is evidence based.
Editorial
The Guardian, Saturday 31 October 2009 wrote:Professor David Nutt is an expert in his field: a professor of psychopharmacology at Bristol University and head of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. He knows more about the brain's responses to anxiety, addiction and sleep than any politician or media commentator. He is precisely the sort of man who should be helping the government shape its drugs policy, which is why he was appointed and then reappointed to serve as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. That is also why it is such a disgrace that Alan Johnson, the home secretary, sacked him late yesterday afternoon for having the temerity to point out some obvious truths about the government's populist and unthinking handling of the issue.
Mr Johnson, it seems, welcomes independent advice when it agrees with his own prejudices but does not have the strength of character to listen to people who tell him difficult truths. Perhaps he would rather Professor Nutt had continued to tolerate past practice, which was to repeatedly advise the government that not all illegal drugs are as dangerous as some influential newspapers claim, and that not all legal ones are safe, and then find that advice rejected just as repeatedly by ministers. Instead the professor made his views public this week, in a speech and in a pamphlet for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. In it, he confronted government policy. But what is the point of having an independent panel of experts if its members are sacked when they offer expert advice?
In a statement yesterday the Home Office said it remained "determined to crack down on all illegal substances and minimise their harm to health and society as a whole". Nothing Professor Nutt believes contradicts the important part of that statement – the need to minimise the harm drugs cause. But he is not the only person to see the idiocy in a policy that declares some drugs (cannabis among them) illegal, while others (alcohol, obviously) are not. "Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he argued. "Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."
Mr Johnson is the second home secretary to find Professor Nutt's views challenging, but the only one to sack him. When Professor Nutt pointed out to Jacqui Smith that 100 people die a year from riding horses, and only 30 from ecstasy, the press got excited. But no one could show that it wasn't true. Drugs cause harm. Drugs law is a fraught issue. A brave minister would take advice and accept that the government might be in the wrong. Shooting the messenger is stupid and dangerous.
100 people die a year from riding horses, and only 30 from ecstasy,
That statement is a bit disingenuous and unscientific. The 100 dying from riding horses should be related to the number who partake in the activity as should the number dying from taking ecstasy. It's the rate that is important not the absolute numbers.
After all, not many people die in this country from playing Russian roulette but that doesn't mean its less dangerous than drinking alcohol, riding horses or taking ecstasy.
100 people die a year from riding horses, and only 30 from ecstasy,
That statement is a bit disingenuous and unscientific. The 100 dying from riding horses should be related to the number who partake in the activity as should the number dying from taking ecstasy. It's the rate that is important not the absolute numbers.
After all, not many people die in this country from playing Russian roulette but that doesn't mean its less dangerous than drinking alcohol, riding horses or taking ecstasy.
Given that more people neck pills each week (somewhere around 30% of 17 to 30 year olds) than go horse riding, the rate statistics are even more in favour of the draconian drugs laws changing.
Those who appoint advisors can receive MULTIPLE streams of information in order to make strategic decisions.
A single advisor probably doesn't have access to the other data sources, and so should probably refrain from making public announcements.
I think in this case the idea was that the categorization of drugs was to be in the hand of scientists. The policy and sentencing that was applied to those categories were the realm of politics. This issues seems to be that in this case the advisor refused to recognize that the daily mail and sun are really far more able to measure the harm of a a drug than he was looking at facts.
Horse riding may be relatively safe, but there are plenty of seriously dangerous 'sports' that (mostly) young men take part in, like (for example) off piste snow boarding, and they are actively encouraged and have documenataries made of them and thay are advertised as role models by the snow board manufacturers.
Drinking and smoking may be more tolerated than celebrated these days but risk taking is built in to human nature, and how much society accepts it depends on how much money can be made out of it by the controlling elements of society.
RalphW wrote:......... and how much society accepts it depends on how much money can be made out of it by the controlling elements of society.
They probably make as much out of crime as the criminals do what with insurance, costs of replacement and the tax on that stuff. And it all counts as economic growth, to boot.
