In the long and tortured debate over drug policy, one of the
strangest episodes has been playing out this fall in the United
Kingdom, where the country's top drug adviser was recently fired
for publicly criticizing his own government's drug laws.
The adviser, Dr. David Nutt, said in a lecture that alcohol is
more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the
United Kingdom might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana
smokers in jail. His comments were published in a press release
in October, and the next day he was dismissed. The buzz over his
sacking has yet to subside: Nutt has become the talk of pubs and
Parliament, as well as the subject of tabloid headlines like:
"Drug advisor on wacky baccy?"
But behind Nutt's words lay something perhaps more surprising,
and harder to grapple with. His comments weren't the idle
musings of a reality-insulated professor in a policy job. They
were based on a list - a scientifically compiled ranking of
drugs, assembled by specialists in chemistry, health, and
enforcement, published in a prestigious medical journal two
years earlier.
The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title "Mean
Harm Scores for 20 Substances," ranked a set of common drugs,
both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how
addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they
threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of
the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness
of different substances.
That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for
saying out loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal
drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking,
and LSD is less damaging yet.
Nutt says he didn't see himself as promoting drug use or trying
to subvert the government. He was pressing the point that a
government policy, especially a health-related one like a drug
law, should be grounded in factual information. In doing so, he
found himself caught in a crossfire that cost him the advisory
post he had held for a decade.