THE BRITISH government’s top drug advisers have demanded a meeting with British home secretary Alan Johnson as fury mounted about his decision to sack their chairman.
Prof David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was told to go after he said alcohol and cigarettes caused more harm than Ecstasy and cannabis.
In a letter to Mr Johnson, the other members of the advisory body warned: “For some members these matters are of such seriousness as to raise the question whether they can, in good conscience, continue on the council.”
Two of their colleagues have already quit: Dr Les King, former head of drug intelligence at the Forensic Science Service, and Marion Walker, a National Health Service drugs expert.
Having said he could not advise the government and attack its policies and that he had lost confidence in him, Mr Johnson yesterday charged that Prof Nutt had “undermined” the government’s drug policies. The home secretary was supported by prime minister Gordon Brown, whose spokesman said ministers must take scientific advice into account, but they were not bound to follow it.
The controversy erupted after the publication in recent days of a speech given in July by Prof Nutt to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, when he said drugs should be classified according to the harm they caused.
Under such a league table, alcohol would come fifth behind cocaine, heroin, barbiturates and methadone, while tobacco would be in ninth place, ahead of cannabis, LSD and Ecstasy.
The drugs body was established by the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act to offer independent advice on drug use, and the British government for decades accepted its recommendations without demur. In 2002 it recommended that cannabis be downgraded from Class B to Class C – which brings a two-year sentence for possession, rather than five. This recommendation was accepted in 2004.
In 2006 the advisory body recommended that Ecstasy be downgraded from Class A to Class B, but this advice was not accepted. In 2008 the government changed its mind about cannabis and reclassified it as a Class B drug.
Last February Prof Nutt was forced to apologise by then home secretary Jacqui Smith after he wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that taking Ecstasy was no more dangerous than riding a horse.
Conservative Party leader David Cameron said scientists should be able to give advice “in a clear and unvarnished way”, but he did not support calls to lower penalties for Ecstasy and cannabis possession.
He said Prof Nutt’s declaration that Ecstasy use was less dangerous than horse-riding, which he repeated this week, was not “a particularly good way of putting it”.
“But I am very clear in terms of the actual policy that we should not be changing classifications, we should be keeping them where we are – yes, on drugs, but also on alcohol,” said Mr Cameron.