Independent drug advisory panel launches
Professor David Nutt has launched a rival body to the government's advisory drugs panel
Friday, 15, Jan 2010 12:04
By Elizabeth Davies
Professor David Nutt, the former chairman of the government's advisory drugs panel, has launched his own rival body to study the science of drug harm.
Professor Nutt was sacked by the home secretary Alan Johnson last October for criticising government policy in a public address. He had previously been chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) since November 2008.
In his Eve Saville Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, Professor Nutt attacked the "precautionary principle" used by the government to re-classify cannabis as a class B drug. He said an evidence-based approach was needed to drug policy to avoid an "isolated and arbitrary" debate about the dangers of drug use.
In a letter asking Professor Nutt to step down, Mr Johnson accused him of going beyond the remit of his position and "lobbying for a change in government policy".
The new Independent Council on Drug Harms met for the first time in a private meeting on Thursday evening. The body includes about 20 specialists in the area of drug harm, including four of the five scientists who resigned from the ACMD in the wake of Professor Nutt's sacking.
Professor Nutt announced the formation of the new body in a video posted to his Facebook page in late December. He said that he was "absolutely convinced now that there is no future for scientists working in government", and promised that the new body's independence had allowed it to bring together a "much stronger" group of experts than the ACMD.
In the video, Professor Nutt described some of the issues the independent council was planning to examine. He said they would produce a new harm assessment tool for drugs, along with publishing a set of public guidelines on the relative harm of taking drugs "so people can really understand what drugs do".
He also said that the body planned to ask Professor Nutt's large body of supporters to help finance their work by making donations through the website. The BBC has reported that the group has so far received enough funding from a private benefactor to support them for three years.
The council's first meeting comes as the ACMD's new chairman, Les Iverson, began his tenure with an inauspicious beginning. Professor Iverson's appointment was announced on Wednesday, but it quickly emerged that in a 2003 article he had argued in favour of the legalisation of cannabis, claiming it was one of the "safe" recreational drugs.
Professor Iverson told the BBC's Radio 5 Live that he had since changed his mind. In a November interview with the Observer, Professor Nutt said that he thought the position of ACMD chair might become "unviable" because no "independent-minded scientist" would be willing to take it up.