Mick Hartley

I'm beginning to have some sympathy for Alan Johnson and his dismissal of Prof David Nutt as the head of the government's advisory panel on drugs. Here's Nutt's latest:

Alcohol is the “gateway drug” that remains the greatest threat to society, and the Government’s failure to address the problem epitomises its disregard for scientific evidence, Professor David Nutt said yesterday.

Professor Nutt said that the comparison he made between the harm caused by alcohol and Ecstasy, which led to his dismissal as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was incontrovertible. He questioned the Government’s arbitrary approach to the assessment and control of harmful substances, and how ministers might think that giving alcohol a harm ranking was a distraction.

“When I say alcohol is more dangerous than Ecstasy, cannabis and LSD, I mean it, and the council means it,” Professor Nutt said. “The Government has to wake up to this time bomb and the health risks of alcohol. Across the political spectrum everyone knows that alcohol is the biggest killer.”

Professor Nutt said he felt that alcohol prices could be raised to triple the price at which some drinks were sold, with taxation the most obvious way of achieving this.

This does not sound to me like a man who you'd want as your scientific advisor. Yes, politicians need to take account of the scientific evidence, such as it is, but they need to take account of much else besides. It's not an easy balance: especially if your scientific advisor is busy publicising his own views – scientific and political – at every opportunity.

He seems to think he's dropping some kind of bombshell here, which a craven government is unwilling to accept – "When I say alcohol is more dangerous than Ecstasy, cannabis and LSD, I mean it". But this isn't a finding that should come as a surprise to anyone. We've known this for years. Of course alcohol is dangerous. 

There are two issues here. First, Nutt's apparent belief that drugs should be ranked solely according to their harmfulness, and second, the nature of the scientific evidence. 

To state the obvious: we are where we are. We're not in the position of building up a society from scratch and having a list of drugs to vet and place into Class A, B, or C, according to their health risk. We live in a culture that's developed, for better and worse, alongside the use of alcohol. The problems with that are well known, but we're not about to ban it or make it illegal. Prohibition in the States was a disaster: apart from the disrespect for the law that it encouraged, it was probably the major factor in the growth of organised crime – which then switched to other drugs like heroin when prohibition ended.

Some alcohol positives – which no one seems inclined to mention for some reason…. It's a sociable drug. It makes you feel good. It's associated with some of the finer more sophisticated aspects of our culture, from wine and whisky (and whiskey) to beers, pubs, saloons, and all the rest. Plus, the actual taste, the business of getting it down, as well as being a familiar rite of passage, is an acquired one. Children don't naturally like the flavour of wine or whisky. We pride ourselves on our adult appreciation of these tastes. (This does not, however, apply to all these recent alco-pop vodka-based drinks, which is why there is, rightly, such a fuss about them.)

You can also readily judge your degree of drunkenness. Again it's a familiar rite of passage. When you start drinking, and you start to feel good, you assume that the more you drink the better you'll feel. You soon learn the lesson and, bent over the toilet vomiting up your over-indulgence, acquire a certain wisdom. Of course. some people don't seem to acquire that wisdom – or forget it the next night. Well, that's the way it goes, unfortunately. There are always fools.

The negatives are indeed horrendous – but as I say, we've made that pact now. We have to learn how best to live with it.

So clearly there's more for a politician to be concerned with than scientific evidence. But even that is far from straightforward. 

Take cannabis. OK, it doesn't kill people the way alcohol can. But it's far from the benign drug of hippy fantasy. Or at least, for many people it is. The effects are exceedingly complex, but I don't think there's any doubt that it can precipitate psychotic episodes, and even predispose to later mental illness. In the discussion here the question's raised, if you came across a bunch of youths in a dark alley, would you rather they were potheads or drunks – the "correct" answer being of course the former. Fair enough (though what about heroin addicts? If they'd just shot up, yeah, they'd be best of all. If they hadn't had a fix for a while and had no money to buy the next, well, not so good) but another question might be: if your teenage children were at a party, and one drug was available, would you rather (ignoring the question of legality) it were alcohol, dope, Ecstasy, or cocaine. I'd go for alcohol every time. Take too much alcohol, they throw up: lesson (hopefully) learned. 

With Es – with LSD, with any pills – you pop it, the effects come later. You just hope you've judged the strength right and the dealer wasn't lying to you (hah!). Not a safe way to get high.

Yes, I'm in favour generally of easing the laws on drugs. Keep cannabis as Class C, for instance. But these are political decisions: extremely difficult political decisions. It doesn't help either for scientific advisors to go public about their disagreements with their political masters, or to claim that it's merely cowardice or hypocrisy – fear of the Daily Mail backlash – that prevents politicians from doing what you want them to do.