Professor Nutt has, dishonestly in my view, misrepresented the debate
about cannabis as a black or white view, in order to justify his
position. It is in fact shades of grey. Nutt has been proselytising
about drugs, an action that is incompatible with his former role.

The decision about cannabis was about putting cannabis back where it
historically was, before David Blunkett downgraded it. The
classification had become totemic for people on both sides of the
cannabis debate.

Personally I think classification, as advice to users (as against
priority advice to law enforcement and the courts) is heavily overdone.
I prefer a system in which drugs are either legal or illegal but that is
not where we are.

I attended the ACMD open hearing on cannabis, Professor Nutt does not
represent honestly to the public, the range of debate. The National
Director Of Mental Health Professor Louis Appleby was one of those who
clearly wanted cannabis put back to B, there are many other such
scientists.

Professor Murray -the expert on psychosis, said on BBC World at 1, that
Nutt played “fast & loose” with the statistics. Well exactly.

At the ACMD there was an attempt to rig some of what was said, the
importation of arch-legaliser, Professor Simon Lenton from Australia, to
speak to the public and the ACMD. I spoke to Lenton afterwards, he wants
changes to the UN conventions. I also established that Lenton’s visit to
the UK was (quite remarkably) paid for by the UK tax payer-someone fixed
that! I have my suspicions as to who that was.

Now what of the ACMD itself? Professor Nutt was almost stunned when the
fact that the ACMD was not unanimous on the issue was put to him on BBC
News 24, not a position that he had been telling the public. If the ACMD
was not unanimous and many other academics were seeing the case
differently, what was the Government to do? It HAD to err on the side of
caution so it was right to reclassify.

Government is very aware of the damage being done to the UK population
by drugs use and particularly cannabis-remember Blair’s feral youth?
Kids who use cannabis on the way to school, at school and on the way
home become unteachable, they become unable to plan or look far beyond
the next joint, that is, even if they do not succumb to diagnosable
mental illness.

What of Professor Nutt’s own position? Well he justifies himself by
saying the scientists were all agreed, but they only represent a small
portion of the over 30 voices on the ACMD. The GP representative who
sees drugs problems on the front line, has spoken out and says she does
not support Nutt. Nutt himself was not even Chairman when the cannabis
review was done, it was Sir Michael Rawlins, so Nutt’s own vote carried
no more weight than that of any other member. He is not even himself an
expert on the effects of cannabis OR of Ecstasy. Why are we to believe
in his omnipotence on this issue?

Nutt has ignored, in his public utterances since being dismissed, the
important change in the nature of cannabis (of which the Home Office
must be aware). Home grown cannabis is now dominating the market, this
contains less or no CBD, a chemical that we heard at the ACMD may be an
anti-psychotic and may, when present in roughly equal proportions with
THC, defend against brain damage. I argue that not only (to quote
Murray) is Nutt playing fast & loose with the statistics, he is playing
fast & loose with the science. He has personally tinkered with the idea
of legalisation in a Radio Broadcast in New Zealand-(it can be found
using Google) which I brought to public and Home Office attention.
Yesterday he admitted to drug use himself (in the Telegraph interview).
It seems that the Professor is one of a generation who justify
liberalisation because of his or their own, earlier folly.

Language matters in the drugs debate because there is a new generation
of potential drugs users along every year. They make their decisions to
use /any/ drug for the first time against the backdrop of culture and
comment.

Professor Nutt by his many unwise statements has been affecting that
culture and even revelling in the notoriety. Alan Johnson was right to
relieve him of his position. Of course the Home Office had lost
confidence in him and because the Professor cannot shut up we will all
see his real colours in coming months.

The circling of scientific wagons against what is perceived as an
external enemy is sadly misjudged, mostly by people who have no idea of
the detailed science themselves.

Scientists are not always right, judgements about drugs are not JUST a
matter of science, relationships between various drugs and the possible
harms are not susceptible to the spurious accuracy that Nutt claims. His
Brave New World (subscribed to by a few other fellow scientific
travellers who cannot get their own way) where scientists decide
everything, independent of government and no one else has a valid
opinion, is a sort of madness. The emperor has no clothes.

David Raynes

Post scriptum
How correct was my analogy with Brave New World?
Nutt (in the Telegraph) advocates inventing some sort of replacement for
alcohol.
I wonder if he has thought of a name for it?
Shal we call it SOMA?

no sorry i take that back giving you anything other than the gang fucking you obviously deserve would be a waste of time and cannabis, you fuckwit!

oh im not sure if your name is supposed to be ironic but just in case its not, do you realise that the modern use of the phrase chillout is related to coming down off drugs! and anything advertised or sold as “for chilling out” refers to this and is trying to exploit that drug culture you obviously think is as low as paedophilia and this means you are also exploiting it by choosing you screen name.

He’s differentiating between drugs that are produced only for recreational use, and drugs (eg ketamine) that have medical applications.