According to this analysis Johno, Straw, Clarke, et al, are shit scared of the likes of Mel, and always have been, whenever the issue of more humane drug legislation arises?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/nutt-johnson-drugs-rightwing-press

what? you think that a bottle of red impairs your functioning more than “a night spent assembling Rizlas”? You really think you could get stoned nightly and function daily? Not if your job requires you to put one neuron in front of the other without tripping over.

From extensive personal experience, yes, I do think that. Of course, it rather depends on how many rizlas I assemble, and how much of exactly what I put in them… I certainly couldn’t function properly if I were necking a bottle of red every night, but I seem to manage just fine with a few mild spliffs every night.

Dosage matters, and your mileage may vary.

I know booze does more harm, fags kill more people, but even in moderate doses weed scrambles your brains and incapacitates more than either, I think that needs remembering in all this “cigarettes are worse than weed” talk

Well, granted, tobacco isn’t strongly psychoactive, but I know for a fact that booze inhibits both my hand-eye co-ordination and impulse control far more severely than weed does. People vary quite dramatically in their response to different drugs – some people get pissed on a half of shandy, others can down two bottles of Rioja with no obvious effects. It’s rarely a good idea to generalise from personal experience in such matters.

“Ultimately, the least that needs doing to sort out the Home Office (if its abolition is never finished) is a near clean sweep of senior civil servants: they’re an exceptionally politicized bunch. There will never be any sensible policy whilst these people are briefing against the truth from inside.”

At which point I accidently tell them to shove their job up their arse and get the fuck out of dodge. Something like that anyway.

Firstly, on what grounds does ‘society’ (or whoever) assert the right to determine what I may not put in my body?

Secondly, in what way is the comparison of the risks of horse-riding to the risks of the consumption of Ecstasy a category error? Nutt could indeed have compared (not “linked”) it to the risks of participating in “banana production in the Dominican Republic, to driving motor cars, or to deaths by dog poo discarded in parks in the UK”, or any other activity. As I understand it his point was about public understanding of risk, and what activities are acceptable despite their risks, to get us to think about why some activities are acceptable and some or not, so we make the right decision on the right grounds.

(Now, there is some disagreement about whether he has his facts right about the risks of Ecstasy, but it doesn’t obviate the broader point.)

Anyway, was going to add – 150 years ago horses were indispensable to the way we lived our lives, so not comparable to recreational drug use (same now for driving cars) – but now it’s a minority, 100% recreational pursuit, just like drug use.

Though even there you could well get arrested, charged, fined or imprisoned for supplying underage, or without a licence, or outside permitted hours, or in a wreckless way to drunks.

And to be fair cigarette smugglers and “pushers” can also find themselves on the wrong end of the constabulary and the customologists.

And to continue being fair there is an antisocial element from some parts of drug culture – the physically addictive sector – and crime and there are certainly some links between the suppliers of dope and Es and LSD, new very nasty party drugs, and of whizz, coke, crack and opiates. Between little dealers and big gangsters. And also between casual use of drugs and an often horrendous and murderous supply chain.

Any executive and legislature and policers and judgers don’t just have to weigh up cold hard scientific fact on “harm” – which often isn’t as cold and hard and factual or uncontested as scientists or indeed politicians tend to make out. Scientific facts i.e. data can often begat several competing theories. And the theories are not themselves facts. They gain and lose popularity and they may be made monkeys of by the passage of time, new data or better thinking.

The politicians and the judges etc must also consider social contexts, crime and disorder, parliamentary politics i.e. can they get things through, and also public palatability. And it is arguably their decisions about enforcement and the practical results of those decisions that really matter.

Professor Nuttsacks originally made his remarks about E and horseriding in February. That was surely a fairly serious category error? He could have also linked drug use in some arcane way to banana production in the Dominican Republic, to driving motor cars, or to deaths by dog poo discarded in parks in the UK. A pet subject.

Professor Nuttsacks, having got away with that, seems to have repeated his remarks with bells on late last month. He was, ahem, riding for a fall.

However we may feel about drugs, legalisation, policing, enforcement, pony riding we must surely feel some sense of empathy with politicians lumbered with an unhelpful “expert” pushing personal views? In the real world most of us who are or have been managers or Trustees or indeed participants in democratic parties would be likely, I feel, to deal with Professor Nuttsacks or his equivalent in a similar way to Mr Johnson.

Discuss.

Even the Telegraph is now saying that Alan Johnson – as well as Chris Grayling, his shadow, who supports his decision to sack Prof Nutt – “should also have had the uneasy feeling that they had lost the argument.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6488025/Sketch-Drugs-adviser-is-harder-Nutt-to-crack.html

Ultimately, the least that needs doing to sort out the Home Office (if its abolition is never finished) is a near clean sweep of senior civil servants: they’re an exceptionally politicized bunch. There will never be any sensible policy whilst these people are briefing against the truth from inside.

According to this letter in Monday’s Times from Richard Garside, Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College, London, the lecture by Professor Nutt’s conformed with official guidelines:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/11/david-nutts-controversial-lecture-conformed-to-government-guidelines.html

As presented, the professor’s lecture in July, which incurred the wrath of the Home Secretary, was given by the professor in his capacity as Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, not in his capacity as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The decision to sack Professor from his part-time and unpaid advisory post is starting to look very much like a crass attempt at academic censorship.

Alan Johnson is looking more and more daft over this.

For reference, this is the Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees:
http://www.dius.gov.uk/office_for_science/science_in_government/strategy_and_guidance/~/media/publications/F/file42780

I accidently spent ages doing a report for the NTA and the conclusion of which was ‘drug treatment’s a bit shit in some places and abstinence is a bit idealistic – harm minimization please’. It all depends on what you want to do when you find a smackhead or junkie of anything really. It does seem kind of seem odd that the unhidden grouping of those addicted to prescription drugs or readily available drugs is overlooked – therefore it’s not really a ‘health’ thing but a social problem; from that it can be assumed that it’s the anti-social nature of how they’re traded.

The alcohol stats are complete bollox. 8500 booze deaths per year? Multiply it by 8 and I reckon we’re getting somewhere. There’s a few studies of prevalence stats out there and you can judge it yourself now everyone has to recycle their bottles – some people are drinking fantastically serious amounts of decent booze in their homes and it’s gonna be the heart attack that kills them, sober.

Anyway – good on Nutt for saying the bleedin obvious.

“Business is poised to gain much greater sway over Whitehall under a Conservative government, with corporate ‘big hitters’ being drafted in to help shake up departmental spending and transform the civil service culture.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be968f2a-c72b-11de-bb6f-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Well, got to find jobs for all those redundant and superfluous bankers somehow.

Should the death certificate simply record acute subdural haemorrhage or should it highlight alcohol dependency as a contributing cause as well?