Professor Les Iversen, Department of Pharmacology at Oxford University, author of: The Science of Marijuana (extracts from The Evening Standard, May 6, 2003)
“When I advised the House of Lords committee five years ago that cannabis was not as damaging as, for instance, regular smoking or drinking, no one wanted to know about our findings.
“Cannabis is simply not as dangerous as it is being made out to be.”

The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse commissioned by President Nixon tried to correct the US in their report, Drug Use In America: Problem in Perspective: “Alcohol is a drug. … confusion must be dispelled … Of the drugs which are most commonly associated with dependence or drug-induced behavior, alcohol produces the most clearly established and reproducible brain pathology…” Experts know it is alcohol that dose for dose is most likely to produce violent behavior (which marijuana and heroin tend to suppress), damage to the fetus (not crack) and the highest levels of intoxication (the loss of mental and physical control), but the public does not. Indeed, the Commission said the public had been “conditioned” not to know.

Alcohol today is responsible for 5 of 6 cases of drug abuse and addiction.

See
“Drug Use, Abuse and Dependence (Addiction) In America”

Having worked inParliament for 9 years, I am fully aware of the notion of politcal tribalism and having seen it at first hand (e.g. when a politician of one party got into a lift with one from an opposition party and seeing both bristle at the very idea of both being in a small confiend space with each other was an eye=opener, but if got worse when a member from athird party got in and all of a sufdeen the first two were chums and they visibly collaborated in giving the third party guyth eveil eye!! )… I can corroborate Steve’s point about cynical politics nand woudl add hat ‘professionalism’ and politicians are not often seen walking arm in arm!!.

My point was that the Home Secretary’s decision to ignore the advice was a political act based on the idea that PP is a political device in and of itself. I donot think that his decision to sack the chairman of the ACMD was (or should have been) based on the PP…that would have been a gross misuse of the PP.

Yet, politicians are in business to make decisions and if we the electorate don’t like ‘em we can boot ‘em out.

This was cynical politics and nothing more, the hostile reaction it has engendered entirely appropriate. Hopefully it will be a cautionary tale for politicians in the future. Dont sack your advisors just because you don’t like the advice. And if you treat them with contempt (go and look at what really happened over the last two years) dont be surprised if they call you up on your reckless and unethical actions. If you prioritize politics over science and evidence the result is bad policy that can cost lives. If government advisors cant commetn on that, best resign before you are sacked.

I’ve always been wary of the evidence-driven approach to policy – in fact I think it’s untenable – hence my plea for evidence-informed policy. Most seasoned policy advisors – and I would include David Nutt here – realize that there are a whole raft of values and issues that need to be taken into account in addition to the evidence.

But, the real danger comes when the policy making process is not transparent, poor reasons are put forward for why decisions that are contrary to the evidence are made, and the evidence itself is suppressed or manipulated.

In this case, I think it’s important to distinguish between the policy decisions being made, and the process by which they are made. I’m not going to question Alan Johnson’s invocation of the precautionary principle – that’s a separate issue. but I would question his closing the door to evidence-based analysis and opinion.

Here, the Home Secretary is fulfilling his duty as a politician in recognising risk management as an inherently political act and hence in his statement he invokes the Precautionary Principle. The Precautionary Principle is a device that enables cost-effective action to proceed in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence where there is sufficient evidence of potential harm. The Principle sits at the heart of European policy and Commission guidance on its application makes clear that it is a politician’s job to make judgements about acceptable levels of risk, and that politicians have a duty to take account of uncertainty, public concern and scientific evidence at the same time. The guidance also ups the political ante by making clear that there is no such thing as purely ‘objective’ science.

In the cannabis case, it would be helpful to examine the extent to which there is widespread understanding of the goals of policy and the meaning of the various aspects of evidence. If the goal of policy is simply to reduce harm, then on David Nutt’s reading of the evidence (i.e. that there is a strong argument that cannabis is not a major health hazard) then the situation is relatively straightforward and an appropriate response would then be a yes/no regulatory decision (i.e. class B or C). However, where there are multiple, and contested goals of policy and where evidence is inconclusive, the situation is (at best) complicated and (at worst) chaotic…but probably sits in the middle realm of complexity.

So it would be helpful before condemning or condoning the decision to sack David Nutt to take a step back and make a reasoned judgement about the nature of the policy issue at stake: is the evidence clear and widely understood? Is the goal of policy clear and widely understood? What are the various lines of argument in the debate (coming from science, public opinion and political gut-reaction)? What ‘evidence-bounded space’ does this create in which the decision should be made? What is the appropriate ‘political’ response to be made in this bounded space? How, where and when should the precautionary principle be invoked and used in this situation?

We must be careful to avoid hitching ourselves too firmly to the evidence-based policy wagon that asserts (as a previous Chief Scientific Adviser had done) that evidence should drive policy. Similarly, we must avoid abandoning evidence as a useful input to inherently political decisions – clearly some evidence is better than none at all, but evidence should inform, not determine decisions. Rather, we need a way of characterising policy issues in relation to their goals and their evidence-base. Armed with this we will make better (but never perfect) decisions. But I refer back to my earlier quotation from Kerry Whiteside “all risk management is political”.

I can’t quite get my head round how someone can believe this serves ‘the people’ better or the democratic process.

What’s to be done? At least call for his reinstatement, though he probably won’t accept.