David Nutt was no stranger to controversy by the time he was fired as chair of the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in October 2009, after claiming that alcohol is more harmful to health, and to society as a whole, than many illegal drugs—including cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy. Though not offering absolute legitimacy to reggae singer Bob Marley’s claim that “herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction,” Nutt called for the use of scientific evidence to inform policy and ran up against a government that didn’t “want facts to get in the way of prejudice.”
Two months after being sacked he launched the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, with a mission to “investigate and review the scientific evidence relating to drugs, free from political concerns.” The indie group’s first major study was recently published in The Lancet (Nov. 6) expanding on Nutt’s earlier ...
