Professor David Nutt of the Centre for Crime and Justice, King's College, London has provided an on-line transcript of his Eve Saville Lecture 2009. Prof. Nutt is a noted psychopharmacologist and was chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus1714/Estimating_drug_h arms.pdf or http://tinyurl.com/yh229od The lecture is a sensible look at the relative harmfulness of various drugs, with particular reference to cannabis (you might want to skip directly to p. 4 ("Cannabis--a potent problem") if you're not interested in the introductory discussion of UK drug regulations. What was the government's response to this excellent, well- informed report by an expert? They fired him from the advisory council. Perhaps they were already a bit sensitive given his earlier injudicious statement that 100 people a year die from riding horses while 30 die from taking ecstasy (I assume fewer people in the UK ride horses than take ecstasy, but I could be wrong). See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/31/david- nutt-sacking-alan-johnson or http://tinyurl.com/y8v89ml Up here in Canada, we had a similar sensible report 40 years ago (the Le Dain Commission of Inquiry Into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs). It went nowhere also. And our current government has given no indication that it intends to soften penalties for cannabis. To the contrary, actually. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
