You enact a set of laws which classifies illegal drugs to reflect the harm they are likely to cause so that you can properly punish those caught in possession of them or dealing them. You then set up a committee of scientific, medical and social experts to advise you into which classification each drug should be placed. They will assess all of the evidence of actual harm and revisit them in the light of new evidence.
This sounds like a sensible way of regulating potentially harmful substances and it is. It takes controlling drugs out of the realms of myth and prejudice and into a scientific, evidence based regimen.
This had been the process for almost 4 decades in Britain until Gordon Brown took power. His main advice seems to come from the hysterical tabloid newspapers whipping up misinformation based on a few isolated but tragic cases or sheer invention. Now the chair of the committee had been sacked for daring to point this out and that many illegal drugs are less harmful than alcohol and tabacco from which the government collects huge amounts in tax.
WARNING: THE BODY OF THIS DIARY CONTAINS SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE EFFECTS AND USE OF SUBSTANCES WHICH ARE ILLEGAL IN THE USA AND CANADA.
Since the system was set up in 1971, British governments have acted on the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) into which of the three categories (A, B or C - A being the most dangerous) a drug should fall.
The Blair government accepted their recommendation to downgrade cannabis from class B to class C. This had considerable benefit for the police who could confiscate the drug and issue a formal warning or the equivalent of a traffic ticket to somebody found in possession. It also, incidentally, helped police/minority relations in parts of London where its use is associated culturally, if not religiously, with Rastafarianism.
The system also emphasises to the young that for example one, say heroin, is more dangerous than, say cannabis. It can also stop the "sweetie shop" syndrome of drugs with very different dangers being sold by the same dealer. A dealer might be less willing to sell heroin as well as cannabis if he knew that he would get 14 years jail for the former but 7 for the less powerful drug.
It very soon became apparent after he became Prime Minister that Gordon Brown was not "not Blair", he was Blair with jackboots on as he led his government further down the authoritarian road. The source of this seems to be his fear of criticism in the red top tabloid press and their hysterical promotion of fear campaigns about different substances. A few headlines about the terrors of "skunk" (which has been around for about 10 years) and cannabis was moved back into being a class B substance.
I should explain that, as in some parts of the USA, early experimentation with novel substances often starts in the gay community either as a recreational drug to extend or enhance dancing in clubs or as a form of aphrodisiac. Fashions can change very quickly and use spread into the straight community.
An example of the latter use is a liquid called "GHB" which loosens inhibitions and was misused by men in pubs and bars to make women more receptive. It became confused by the press with rohipnol and labelled a "date rape" drug and was outlawed. Ironically another substance, gamma-butyrolactone or GBL remained legal (not in USA or Canada) as it has legitimate use in cleaning metals and has been used medically in the past to induce deep sleep. When taken orally, it is converted by the body into GHB. As a recreational drug it has two main drawbacks, it interacts with alcohol (to increase drunkenness and induce vomiting) and has a limited window of effect. Too little and there is no effect, too much and it affects coordination and induces sleep. The effective amount varies from person to person and ranges from 1 to 3 ml. Not much use to swig from a bottle in a disco but effective as relaxant, especially for penetrative sex, in a controlled environment.
As I indicated, the use of GBL with other substances, particularly alcohol, can be dangerous. The Daily Mail started a campaign after the death of a young woman who appears to have mixed it with ketamine, a vetinary tranquiliser also used recreationally and, probably, alcohol. From what emerged, her death was a result in inhaling vomit. Based on this one case, the Mail dubbed GBL "coma in a bottle" and dragged out a tame doctor to make this claim (bold mine):
Dr Sean Cummings, who runs a private clinic in Harley Street, London, specialising in patients with drugs problems, believes GBL is claiming the lives of about six people a year. Scores more end up in casualty every weekend
Following the Daily Mail hysteria campaign, the government has "consulted" on the legality of GBL and is likely to classify it as a controlled susbstance later this year.
Any death of a young person is tragic however a presumed connection between GBL, this death and the "believed" number should be put in the context of this information from a site sponsored by the UK drinks industry.
• More than 30,000 people were admitted to hospital with alcohol poisoning in England in 2007-08 (13,400 men and 16,700 women) – that’s more than 500 every week.(1)
• 157 people died from accidental alcohol poisoning in England in 2007.(2)
People are very well aware of the dangers of drinking alcohol and the long term consequences. 22 year old Gary Reinbach died in July this year as a result of alcoholic liver failure yet we do not see the Daily Mail campaigning to outlaw alcohol. Something to do with their advertising income perhaps?
Experimentation with forbidden substances - whether it be illegal drugs or alcohol and tabacco - is, like it or not, part of growing up in most parts of the West these days. You can only mitigate the dangers and the "just say no" approach does not work. Proper and honest information is needed, even if this involves telling young people that heroin is injected in order to then go on to warn about the HIV risks of needle sharing. Daily Mail style hysteria and falsehoods are highly dangerous. Implying that a single use of one substance or another will immediately lead to the worst excesses of addiction - when manifestly false as they see others who have experimented - undermines real information and sanctions the use of any and all substances. An example of this would be pretending that cannabis is automatically a "gateway" drug to others.
Empowering young people with proper information will save lives. Take ecstacy for example, perhaps one of the commonest drugs used in clubs in the UK. Early on there were deaths from overheating or, conversely from water intoxication due to the obsessive drinking of water because people were told to keep hydrated to avoid overheating! The advice to drink moderately has gone out, even if on the grapevine, and there are fewer reports of hospitalization today.
Knowing the actual relative dangers of different substances is a vital part of this and, operated properly, the classification system can do this. Yet, as I have described, the Brown government is so keen to pander to the worst of the tabloids in an effort to maintain their popularity, they throw common sense out of the window.
On Thursday, the Guardian published an article by the Chairman of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, which was based on a paper he had written for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College, University of London. In turn, that was based on a transcript of the 2009 Eve Saville memorial lecture he had given in July in his person capacity as a university professor, not the Chair of the ACMD.
In this, he describes how the Committee had been asked in 2007 to look at the classification of cannabis because, in the words of the brief,
"Though statistics show that cannabis use has fallen significantly, there is real public concern about the potential mental health effects of cannabis use, in particular the use of stronger forms of the drug, commonly known as skunk."
This had followed a series of articles about skunk in various right wing newspapers. Among the ACMD's conclusions were:
● Cannabis is a harmful drug and there are concerns about the widespread use of cannabis among young people.
● A concerted public health response is required to drastically reduce its use.
● Current evidence suggests a probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness and cannabis use.
● The harms caused by cannabis are not considered to be as serious as drugs in class B and therefore it should remain a class C drug.
For the first time, the evidence based recommendations of this expert committee were ignored and cannabis was upgraded to Class B. In relation to psychotic illness, Nutt points out it is difficult to assess whether the symptoms are the result of acute exposure to cannabis or are a long term consequence. Even if they were:
If we look on the generous side, there is a likelihood that taking cannabis, particularly if you use a lot of it, will make you more prone to having psychotic experiences. That includes schizophrenia. But schizophrenia is a relatively rare condition, so it's very hard to be sure about its causation. The analysis we came up with was that smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic-like experience than non-smokers. To put that figure in proportion, you are 20 times more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke tobacco than if you don't.
The other paradox is that schizophrenia seems to be disappearing (from the general population), even though cannabis use has increased markedly in the last 30 years. So, even though skunk has been around now for 10 years, there has been no upswing in schizophrenia. In fact, where people have looked, they haven't found any evidence linking cannabis use in a population and schizophrenia.
So to summarise, there is tenuous evidence of a causal link between cannabis use and psychotic experiences and compelling evidence that the use of skunk rather than other forms hasn't any effect on the incidence of schizophrenia. Nutt also argued that increasing the classification would give the drug greater cache and lead to an increase in use.
Despite Nutt's views being old news - the original lecture was given in July remember and had received a little coverage then - the publication in the Guardian was taken up in the rest of the media. The Professor's other views (about how there should be a wholesale assessment of the effects of various substances, including tobacco and alcohol, should be presented and the real dangers, based on scientific evidence, be used to grade them) got more examination in the media.
Today, he warns of the negative consequences of what he calls, a "highly politicised" process. It risks causing, he suggests, "great damage to the educational message" on drugs.
"If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you're probably wrong. They are often quite knowledgeable about drugs and the internet has made access to information extremely simple. We have to tell them the truth."
The government view, though, is that they should adopt a precautionary principle. "Where there is... doubt about the potential harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public," as Jacqui Smith put it last year
BBC
The government went into full spin overdrive against Nutt. Much was made of his earlier comparison between the number of deaths from "horse riding addiction" (100) and ecstacy (30) in his attempts to inject some sense in the assessment of the risks of illegal substances. (Note that although the numbers of deaths each year had risen from 10 in the early 1990s, use has increased significantly greater as I indicated earlier.)
On Thursday night we had the unedifying sight of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (she was forced out after it was found her expenses claim included two pornographic films her husband watched that had been added to her cable broadband bill) on the BBC's political round table discussion program "Question Time". Smith has admitted smoking cannabis in her youth. It was she who commissioned the original ACMD review based on this nonsense and who raised the classification. She repeated with the old hoary claim that "it was not like this high power skunk you get these days" that the Committee debunked. She also (as far as I can fathom) invented for the program the concept of "binge smoking", no doubt to invoke the image of the binge drinking of alcohol that undoubtedly does go on in British cities. I have news for Ms Smith, if you overindulge in cannabis, you completely "mong out" or simply fall asleep. Unlike the violence, injury, hospitalization and deaths resulting from binge drinking, the best scientific evidence now refutes this as a result of very heavy cannabis smoking.
There does however now seem to be a direct causal link between an impartial scientific report and assessment of the effects of cannabis and "reefer madness" in the Labour Party. Nothing can be said to undermine Gordon "The Great Leader" Brown or his minions. On Friday, the current Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, sacked Nutt from his chairmanship. Nutt defended his giving of evidence based recommendations.
Prof Nutt said he was not prepared to "mislead" the public about the effects of drugs in order to convey a moral "message" on the government's behalf.
In his letter responding to the sacking he wrote.
"Whilst I accept that there is a distinction between scientific advice and government policy there is clearly a degree of overlap.
"If scientists are not allowed to engage in the debate at this interface then you devalue their contribution to policy making and undermine a major source of carefully considered and evidence-based advice."
While the Tory shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling played to their right wing by supporting Johnson calling the sacking "an inevitable decision" after Prof Nutt's "latest ill-judged contribution to the debate", the Chair of the Commons Select Committee on Science is challenging him to explain why he was sacked. "It is disturbing if an independent scientist should be removed for reporting sound scientific advice."
The Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne was more forthright,
"The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is simply not independent if its chair can be sacked for telling the Government what it does not want to hear. Ministers have constantly ignored the advice of experts when it comes to drug policies and pressed ahead with their own prejudices. If ministers care so little for independent scientific advice, they should save public money by sacking the entire group of experts and instead appointing a committee of tabloid editors."
Nutt is also getting support from his fellow experts.
Claudia Rubin from Release - a national centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law - said the expert should not have been penalised.
"It's a real shame and a real indictment of the government's refusal to take any proper advice on this subject," she said.
And Prof Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said the government could not expect experts who serve on its independent committees not to voice their concern if the advice they give is rejected. "I worry that the dismissal of Prof Nutt will discourage academic and clinical experts from offering their knowledge and time to help the government in the future"
BBC
And there is the problem. Labour and, it looks like, the Conservatives are content to pander to the worst of the tabloid press to make their decisions while expert scientists are discouraged from even attempting to help them formulate sensible policies.