Government drugs agenda busted wide open

Home Secretary Alan Johnson last week sacked the Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Professor David Nutt was shown the door after giving a speech attacking the government’s decision to toughen up cannabis laws.

Alan Johnson told David Nutt that he no longer had confidence in him after Nutt accused ministers of “distorting and devaluing” evidence over cannabis when they overruled the ACMD’s advice and reclassified cannabis from class C to B.

This attack on the independence of the government’s scientific advisors demonstrates that the official drugs agenda will not be guided by reason or scientific advice. Instead the government is sending a firm message that its bodies of so-called ‘independent’ advisors are expected to facilitate government policy rather than providing critical scientific scrutiny.

The resignation of the two other members of the ACMD panel in the aftermath of Professor Nutt’s sacking reflects the horrified reaction of the scientific community, as well as the general public.

The drug policies of Labour and Tory governments have always been marked by irrational, knee-jerk reactions to the various moral panics which sweep the country every few months. The governments’ drug agendas have nearly always flown in the face of both common sense and scientific advice. This has resulted in a major drug industry which blights whole communities with murder, prostitution, and drug-related crimes.

The Tories are no better than Labour; Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling backed Alan Johnson, saying that it reflected the government’s lack of focus because they didn’t sack Dr Nutt earlier.

When the government couldn’t find any scientific evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, they simply got one of their advisors, Dr David Kelly, to make it up. When the lies were exposed, they used him as a scapegoat. The attacks on him by the same government ministers who had forced him to create the false dossier and the constant media hounding led to his committing suicide some time later.

Clearly the government burned its fingers with the David Kelly WMD affair, so now when someone contradicts their official line, they resort to the cowardly and bullying option of sacking them.

Unfortunately for Alan Johnson, this seems to have totally backfired. With the government unable to provide any reason for contradicting the ACMD’s advice, they have jeopardised the independence of scientific advice to the government.

Without this advice, everything from Nuclear weapons to Drugs policies would be free of scientific reasoning and instead directed by the government’s hypocritical agenda which is constantly reacting to the interests of its capitalist masters and their media.