In all the furore over the UK government sacking one of its advisors for criticising policy, I think there has been some misunderstanding. None of the sources I’ve seen has been able to pin down exactly which of Professor Nutt’s statements ultimately led to his dismissal, but one that the media have focussed on is the statement that taking Ecstasy is less dangerous than riding a horse. Since my argument doesn’t depend on the specifics of the claim, I’ll take this as an example.
It seems to me that in making a statement like this, Professor Nutt is speaking about the risk of physical harm to the person undertaking the activity. This kind of statement is well within the professor’s area of expertise, and I have no reason to doubt its veracity. Various people in the government have attempted to play this statement down, quibble with it or sweep it under the carpet, and I believe they are wrong to do so. This statement is a verifiable matter of fact, and if it is wrong we should be able to produce sufficient evidence to contradict it. Assuming it is correct, it is also a pertinent observation in setting out drug policy.
There is another sort of harm though, which drug policy needs to take very seriously: the issue of harm to a society. I’m thinking here of the difference between a society where people are happy and benefit from their interactions with others, and a society that thwarts people’s ambitions and harms their development.
It seems to me that society is a system that is complex beyond any one person’s understanding, and full of feedback loops and non-linear effects that can make unintended consequences irrevocable. This would support caution in decriminalising substances even where the risk of physical harm were small, since we don’t know whether decriminalisation will increase or decrease consumption, nor the effect of having a greater or lesser number of people experiencing altered states of mind.
Ecstasy and cannabis have the potential to do harm to society in the same way that television and the internet have harmed society—and the potential to help it as well. We don’t have the luxury of choosing whether drugs exist, only whether we use criminal punishment or not, and neither stance is obviously correct. If we wish to work out which is which is the best path we need a robust debate, and sacking advisors is not the way to achieve that. If the key difference in opinion is that Professor Nutt was talking about physical harm, while Alan Johnson wishes to emphasise social harm, then the latter ought to say so.
