David Nutt advocates new approach

Baroness Eliza Manningham Buller is not the only person connected with Imperial to voice concerns about the “War on Drugs”. Professor David J Nutt, who holds the Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology has long been an outspoken critic of British drug policy. Last week he joined Baroness Manningham Buller and other major public figures, including Jimmy Carter and Lech Wałesa, in publishing a public letter, which appeared as a full length advertisement in the national papers, entitled “The Global War on Drugs has Failed, It is Time for a New Approach”. In the letter, they urge governments to “consider shifting resources away from criminalising tens of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens, and move towards an approach based on health, harm-reduction, cost-effectiveness and respect for human rights”.

Last year Nutt co-authored a paper in The Lancet which suggested that, taking into account the harm done to both users and others, alcohol was more dangerous than heroin. The paper also claimed that “present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm”.

Of course, Nutt is best known by the general public for having been removed from his post as the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs after speaking out against the government’s decision to ignore official advice and reclassify cannabis from Class B to Class C. Alan Johnson, the then Home Secretary, wrote to Nutt, saying that he could not “have public confusion between scientific advice and policy”. Shortly after the incident, however, the Guardian reported Nutt saying: “All I was trying to do was help. I wasn’t challenging the government. We can help them. We can give them very good advice, and it would be much more simpler [sic] if they took that advice rather than getting tangled up in other sorts of messages which frankly really do confuse the public.”