The sacking of Prof. Nutt, the chair of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs, raises stereotyped responses on both sides which need to be disentangled. The scientists who are up-in-arms about the Government’s refusal to accept their conclusion (that alcohol and tobacco cause more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis) must recognise that Ministers are entitled to reject their advice when politics involves a wider agenda and broader values than the automatic application of scientific data. Equally, Ministers should not seek scientific advice unless they are genuinely and seriously prepared to consider accepting the conclusions, even if they reserve the right not to do so for clear and specific reasons. Where a Minister has already made up his/her mind in advance, it only produces cynicism and resentment to go through a process of scientific inquiry which then leads nowhere. But there is a second issue too, which is the one Alan Johnson has emphasised, namely that a line has to be drawn between advising the Government and campaigning against the Government. This too involves a sensitive balance.

Prof. Nutt is not alone in campaigning vociferously for policies which (i) have not yet been accepted by Government, and (ii) may be opposed by Government. David King, the former scientific adviser to the Government, campaigned vigorously in favour of nuclear power whilst the matter was still under scrutiny and in limbo. The Chief Medical Officer of Health has recently been strongly advocating raising the price of alcohol in order to discourage binge drinking among young people – a contentious proposal which is currently not Government policy and may never be. So why can’t Nutt do the same without getting sacked? Equally, Gordon Brown began his premiership by declaring that ‘skunk’ was “lethal”, without reading the pharmacological and toxicological evidence that cannabis was never lethal, and insisted on raising it to class B, while Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary refused to reclassify ecstasy from class A to B although the death rate from this drug is miniscule compared with tobacco or alcohol.
Two important conclusions flow from all this. One is that, whilst it is reasonable for politicians to insist that they have to look beyond scientific evidence to wider considerations (code for Daily Mail harassment), they also have a duty to give a lead to public opinion, not obsequiously bend to press harridans. Second, if Ministers do decide to resist the recommendations of their scientific advisers, they should be expected to give their reasons in full, even if in the form: the science may say that, but these are the broader considerations why I judge that the scientific conclusions should be overridden in this case.

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