Resignation 'threatens drug ban'

Mephedrone is legal and widely available

Another senior government drugs adviser has quit, hours before ministers were expected to ban a new "legal high".

The resignation of Dr Polly Taylor from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has sparked speculation that the ban on mephedrone could be delayed.

Lib Dem science spokesman Dr Evan Harris said Home Secretary Alan Johnson's ban would have to wait until the council was "properly constituted".

• 17:43 01 February 2010 by Andy Coghlan

No ill effects were reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world to demonstrate that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.

"There were no casualties at all, as far as I know," says Martin Robbins, spokesman for the "10:23" campaign, created to highlight the alleged ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies.

"No one was cured of anything either," says Robbins. Like an estimated 300 volunteers in several cities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, he swallowed a bottleful of around 80 homeopathic "pillules" at exactly 10.23 am on Saturday. Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of a homeopathic remedy, produced through "infinite" dilution – the process whereby a solution is diluted to the point where no molecules of an active component are likely to remain.

They want to believe

Robbins says that the aim of the stunt was to draw attention to homeopathic medicine's lack of scientific foundation and to embarrass the British high-street pharmacist Boots into withdrawing its treatments from sale.

Responding to the stunt, Boots said: "We know that many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want."

Robbins said that the campaign, conceived and orchestrated by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, would be a success if it prompted the public to ask more questions about what homeopathy actually is.

Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century

April 15-18, 2010 in the San Francisco Bay Area

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Psychedelic Science will bring together international experts to present on psychedelic research and psychedelic psychotherapy topics for the largest conference dedicated solely to psychedelics in the U.S. in 17 years. There will be three full days of programming with concurrent tracks exploring clinical applications, issues relevant to healthcare professionals, and social and cultural issues surrounding the therapeutic and recreational uses of psychedelics.

Psychedelic Science will offer pre- and post-conference workshops with Stanislav Grof, M.D., Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Michael Mithoefer, M.D., Annie Mithoefer, B.S.N., Alex and Allyson Grey, David Nichols, Ph.D., Franz Vollenweider, M.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., and Ann Harrison and Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia of the Women's Visionary Congress.

***Take advantage of our early registration rates before December 31, 2009.***

A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: November 9, 2009

It’s snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyard is in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high school principal, there’s even an ex-girlfriend. And is that Elvis, over by the piñata?

Lou Beach

Uh-oh.

Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.

Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.

“It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobson argues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking. The idea is a prominent example of how neuroscience is altering assumptions about everyday (or every-night) brain functions.

“Most people who have studied dreams start out with some predetermined psychological ideas and try to make dreaming fit those,” said Dr. Mark Mahowald, a neurologist who is director of the sleep disorders program at Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis. “What I like about this new paper is that he doesn’t make any assumptions about what dreaming is doing.”

The paper has already stirred controversy and discussion among Freudians, therapists and other researchers, including neuroscientists. Dr. Rodolfo Llinás, a neurologist and physiologist at New York University, called Dr. Hobson’s reasoning impressive but said it was not the only physiological interpretation of dreams.

“I argue that dreaming is not a parallel state but that it is consciousness itself, in the absence of input from the senses,” said Dr. Llinás, who makes the case in the book “I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self” (M.I.T., 2001). Once people are awake, he argued, their brain essentially revises its dream images to match what it sees, hears and feels — the dreams are “corrected” by the senses.

These novel ideas about dreaming are based partly on basic findings about REM sleep. In evolutionary terms, REM appears to be a recent development; it is detectable in humans and other warm-blooded mammals and birds. And studies suggest that REM makes its appearance very early in life — in the third trimester for humans, well before a developing child has experience or imagery to fill out a dream.

In studies, scientists have found evidence that REM activity helps the brain build neural connections, particularly in its visual areas. The developing fetus may be “seeing” something, in terms of brain activity, long before the eyes ever open — the developing brain drawing on innate, biological models of space and time, like an internal virtual-reality machine. Full-on dreams, in the usual sense of the word, come much later. Their content, in this view, is a kind of crude test run for what the coming day may hold.

None of this is to say that dreams are devoid of meaning. Anyone who can remember a vivid dream knows that at times the strange nighttime scenes reflect real hopes and anxieties: the young teacher who finds himself naked at the lectern; the new mother in front of an empty crib, frantic in her imagined loss.

But people can read almost anything into the dreams that they remember, and they do exactly that. In a recent study of more than 1,000 people, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard found strong biases in the interpretations of dreams. For instance, the participants tended to attach more significance to a negative dream if it was about someone they disliked, and more to a positive dream if it was about a friend.

In fact, research suggests that only about 20 percent of dreams contain people or places that the dreamer has encountered. Most images appear to be unique to a single dream.

Scientists know this because some people have the ability to watch their own dreams as observers, without waking up. This state of consciousness, called lucid dreaming, is itself something a mystery — and a staple of New Age and ancient mystics. But it is a real phenomenon, one in which Dr. Hobson finds strong support for his argument for dreams as a physiological warm-up before waking.

In dozens of studies, researchers have brought people into the laboratory and trained them to dream lucidly. They do this with a variety of techniques, including auto-suggestion as head meets pillow (“I will be aware when I dream; I will observe”) and teaching telltale signs of dreaming (the light switches don’t work; levitation is possible; it is often impossible to scream).

Lucid dreaming occurs during a mixed state of consciousness, sleep researchers say — a heavy dose of REM with a sprinkling of waking awareness. “This is just one kind of mixed state, but there are whole variety of them,” Dr. Mahowald said. Sleepwalking and night terrors, he said, represent mixtures of muscle activation and non-REM sleep. Attacks of narcolepsy reflect an infringement of REM on normal daytime alertness.

In study published in September in the journal Sleep, Ursula Voss of J. W. von_goethe/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.">Goethe-University in Frankfurt led a team that analyzed brain waves during REM sleep, waking and lucid dreaming. It found that lucid dreaming had elements of REM and of waking — most notably in the frontal areas of the brain, which are quiet during normal dreaming. Dr. Hobson was a co-author on the paper.

“You are seeing this split brain in action,” he said. “This tells me that there are these two systems, and that in fact they can be running at the same time.”

Researchers have a way to go before they can confirm or fill out this working hypothesis. But the payoffs could extend beyond a deeper understanding of the sleeping brain. People who struggle with schizophrenia suffer delusions of unknown origin. Dr. Hobson suggests that these flights of imagination may be related to an abnormal activation of a dreaming consciousness. “Let the dreamer awake, and you will see psychosis,” Jung said.

For everyone else, the idea of dreams as a kind of sound check for the brain may bring some comfort, as well. That ominous dream of people gathered on the lawn for some strange party? Probably meaningless.

No reason to scream, even if it were possible.

BBC News: Depression Link To Processed Food

Heart patients saw a big risk reduction from practising meditation

Heart disease patients who practise Transcendental Meditation have reduced death rates, US researchers have said.

At a meeting of the American Heart Association they said they had randomly assigned 201 African Americans to meditate or to make lifestyle changes.

After nine years, the meditation group had a 47% reduction in deaths, heart attacks and strokes.

The research was carried out by the Medical College in Wisconsin with the Maharishi University in Iowa.

It was funded by a £2.3m grant from the National Institute of Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

'Significant benefits'

The African American men and women had an average age of 59 years and a narrowing of the arteries in their hearts.

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION Introduced in India in 1955 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi In the 60s the Beatles popularised it by travelling to India to learn the technique from the Maharishi The Maharishi Foundation says TM is a programme for the development of consciousness Courses are only available through the foundation They cost from £190 for students to £590 for people with incomes over £40,000

The meditation group were asked to practise for 20 minutes twice a day.

The lifestyle change group received education classes in traditional risk factors, including dietary modification and exercise.

Over 9 years, there were 20 events (heart attacks, strokes or death) in the meditation group and 31 in the health education group.

Dr Robert Schneider, lead author and director of the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention at the Maharishi University in Iowa said:

"At the end of the 9 years, 80% of the meditation group were still practising at least once a day.

"But there was very little change in the health education group.

"Their lifestyle was much the same in terms of diet and exercise - it's a very difficult thing to make those changes."

As well as the reductions in death, heart attacks and strokes in the meditating group, their average blood pressure was significantly lower (5mm Hg), and there was a significant reduction in psychological stress in some participants.

Dr Schneider said other studies had shown the benefits of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure and stress, irrespective of ethnicity.

"This is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practise of this particular stress reduction programme reduces the incidence of clinical cardiovascular events, that is heart attacks, strokes and mortality," he said.

Dr Schneider said that the effect of Transcendental Meditation in the trial was like adding a class of newly discovered drugs for the prevention of heart disease.

He said: "In this case, the new medications are derived from the body's own internal pharmacy stimulated by the Transcendental Meditation practice."

Ingrid Collins, a consultant educational psychologist at the London Medical Centre, said: "I'm not at all surprised that a change of behaviour like this can have enormous benefits both emotionally and physically.

"Physical and emotional energy is on a continuum and whatever happens to us physically can affect our emotions and vice versa."

British Heart Foundation Cardiac Nurse Ellen Mason said: "This is a fascinating area and the results were impressive.

"However, in order to fully assess the difference transcendental meditation could have on heart patient's lives, we need to see research confirming it in a far bigger study and with other ethnic groups."

The American Medical Assn. changes its policy to promote clinical research and development of cannabis-based medicines and alternative delivery methods.

By John Hoeffel

November 11, 2009

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

"Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked cannabis," said Dr. Edward Langston, an AMA board member, noting that the limited number of studies was "insufficient to satisfy the current standards for a prescription drug product."

The decision by the organization's delegates at a meeting in Houston marks another step in the evolving view of marijuana, which an AMA report notes was once linked by the federal government to homicidal mania. Since California voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 1996, marijuana has moved steadily into the cultural mainstream spurred by the growing awareness that it can have beneficial effects for some chronically ill people.

This year, the Obama administration sped up that drift when it ordered federal narcotics agents not to arrest medical marijuana users and providers who follow state laws. Polls show broadening support for marijuana legalization.

Thirteen states allow the use of medical marijuana, and about a dozen more have considered it this year.

The AMA, however, also adopted as part of its new policy a sentence that admonishes: "This should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product."

The association also rejected a proposal to issue a more forceful call for marijuana to be rescheduled.

Nevertheless, marijuana advocates welcomed the development. "They're clearly taking an open-minded stance and acknowledging that the evidence warrants a review. That is very big," said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "It's not surprising that they are moving cautiously and one step at a time, but this is still a very significant change."

Advocates also noted that the AMA rejected an amendment that they said would have undercut the medical marijuana movement. The measure would have made it AMA's policy that "smoking is an inherently unsafe delivery method for any therapeutic agent, and therefore smoked marijuana should not be recommended for medical use."

Dr. Michael M. Miller, a psychiatrist who practices addiction medicine, proposed the amendment. "Smoking is a bad delivery system because you're combusting something and inhaling it," he said.

Reaction from the federal government was muted.

Dawn Dearden with the Drug Enforcement Administration said: "At this point, it's still a Schedule I drug, and we're going to treat it as such." The Food and Drug Administration declined to comment.

In a statement, the office of the White House drug czar reiterated the administration's opposition to legalization and said that it would defer to "the FDA's judgment that the raw marijuana plant cannot meet the standards for identity, strength, quality, purity, packaging and labeling required of medicine."

The DEA classifies drugs into five schedules, with the fifth being the least-restrictive. Schedule II drugs, such as cocaine and morphine, are considered to have a high potential for abuse, but also to have accepted medical uses.

Several petitions have been filed to reschedule marijuana. The first, filed in 1972, bounced back and forth between the DEA and the courts until it died in 1994. A petition filed in 2002 is under consideration.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, said that advocates hoped the petition would receive more attention. "Given the change of heart by the AMA, there is every opportunity for the Obama administration to do just that," he said.

In a report released with its new policy, the AMA notes that the organization was "virtually alone" in opposing the first federal restrictions on marijuana, which were adopted in 1937. Cannabis had been used in various medicinal products for years, but fell into disuse in the early 20th century.

Sunil Aggarwal, a medical student at the University of Washington, helped spark the AMA's reconsideration after he researched marijuana's effect on 186 chronically ill patients. "I had reason to believe that there was medical good that could come from these products, and I wanted to see AMA policy reflect that," he said.

The AMA is not the only major doctors organization to rethink marijuana. Last year, the American College of Physicians, the second-largest physician group, called for "rigorous scientific evaluation of the potential therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana" and an "evidence-based review of marijuana's status as a Schedule I controlled substance."

Last month, the California Medical Assn. passed resolutions that declared the criminalization of marijuana "a failed public health policy" and called on the organization to take part in the debate on changing current policy.

john.hoeffel@latimes.com

Subversive anti-cancer cross-stitch kits

For survivors-to-be whose healing arsenal includes attitude. I dedicate this post, on this particular day, to Gloria Rosa Linda, who is going to beat the living shit out of breast cancer. Sewing kits range from $12 to $20, depending on what materials you'd like to include. The folks behind this made bracelets, too, but not for sale. "Just to yell back at the fucking cancer." (subversivecrossstitch.com, via Fuzzy Gerdes)

By evanharrismp

The Home Secretary has now responded to my letter. It is set out below, interwoven with my original letter, and accompanied by comments from me, after consultation with Professor Nutt and Richard Garside (of CCJS at King’s College)

This is still all in the aftermath to Professor Nutt’s sacking by the Home Secretary, and the Home Secretary’s subsequent Q&A sessions in the House of Commons.

 

Objection raised to Home Secretary

1.         You stated in the chamber: “In February, while awaiting publication of the Government’s position on the classification of ecstasy, of which he was already aware, Professor Nutt published an article and addressed the media on the appropriateness or otherwise of the Government’s policy framework, expressing a view that horse riding was more dangerous than ecstasy.”

This is incorrect. A peer-reviewed journal – the Journal of Psychopharmacology – published the article (not Professor Nutt). It was in January 2009, not February as you stated. Professor Nutt wrote and submitted the article the previous year. It was reviewed prior to publication by two expert reviewers. Neither at the time of writing, nor at the date of publication of the article, was Professor Nutt aware of the Government’s position on the classification of ecstasy since the ACMD had not even published its report let alone received the Government’s response. Furthermore the content of the article was discussed with the ACMD secretariat (though he was not required by the Code of Practice to do so) and was discussed and approved in a conversation with Professor Nutt by Paul Wiles the Departmental Chief Science Advisor.

Response from Home Secretary

1. In relation to the publication of Professor Nutt’s paper in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. This was published by the journal but was authored solely by Professor Nutt. I accept that the journal may have been published in January, although its publication did not come to our attention until the beginning of February.

The paper was discussed with the ACMD secretariat and Professor Paul Wiles, Home Office Chief Scientific Advisor. However, neither the secretariat nor Professor Wiles approved the paper. It is not the role of the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Home Office, or indeed the ACMD secretariat to approve, or otherwise, the academic papers produced by independent academics.

Comment:

Home Secretary admits he had the date of publication wrong but does not address the consequential point that he was wrong to tell the House that Prof Nutt was aware of the Government’s response to the ACMD report on Ecstasy. Prof Nutt submitted his paper in November 2008, it was published in January (without press release, comment or fanfare), while the ACMD report was sent to the Government on 4^th February and the Government’s response received on the 11^th February, the same day as the report itself was published.

The Home Secretary is correct to say that there is no need for the Home Office CSA or the ACMD secretariat to approve (or in fact even be notified) of academic papers produced by independent academics. This concedes that this was a not a paper produced by Prof Nutt in his capacity as Chair of ACMD but in his capacity as an academic.  There can be no valid objection to the publication of the paper itself. The objection by the Home Secretary and his predecessor can only have been on its content – which is a matter of academic freedom.

Conclusion:

a) The House was misled on the question of dates and of the knowledge of Prof Nutt of the Government’s response.

b) Prof Nutt’s academic freedom has been impinged by two Home Secretaries

Objection raised to Home Secretary

2.         You stated in the chamber: “On Thursday 29^th October Professor Nutt chose, without prior notification to my Department, to initiate a debate on drugs policy in the national media, returning to the February decisions and accusing my predecessor of distorting and devaluing scientific research”.

This is incorrect, as Richard Garside, Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London has made clear. Professor Nutt delivered his lecture at King’s on 14^th July 2009 to an audience of 150 people with no media. This was published by the CCJS on 29^th October. As you know, there is no requirement on an independent scientific adviser to give prior notification of academic work to the ACMD secretariat in the Home Office in either the general or the ACMD code of practice. Nevertheless, Professor Nutt had indeed informed the secretariat of the paper and received feedback. Prof Nutt even discussed it with Paul Wiles, the Home Office Departmental Chief Scientific Adviser. In fact the Home Office publicised it in advance on their website here:

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/events/show_event.htm?event_id=170&view_type=list&current_page=1&monthID=0&yearID=0

The official flyer for the event described Prof Nutt as Professor David Nutt, Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College London. It was only the Home Office advert that also described him as Chair of the ACMD.

Prof Nutt would not, of course, be banned from accusing Jacqui Smith of “distorting and devaluing scientific research” under the ACMD code of practice , but he did not. There are no references to Ms Smith in his lecture and only 3 to the “former Home Secretary” which are factual. The reference to “distorting” and “devaluing” in the lecture clearly refers to the use of the precautionary principle.

Response from Home Secretary

2. Regarding Professor Nutt’s paper at King’s College. Professor Nutt made the ACMD Secretariat and Professor Wiles aware of the presentation he made on 14 July and saw the slides that were to be used for the presentation. However, neither the secretariat nor Professor Wiles were made aware of the subsequent publication on 29 October, authored by Professor Nutt. Similarly, we were not aware of the article Professor Nutt wrote in the Guardian the following day (published on-line on 29 October).

You state that the official flyer for the event described Professor Nutt in his role at Imperial College. However, the website advertising the lecture also referred to Professor Nutt chairing the ACMD. Furthermore, David Nutt’s presentation, clearly used information that was part of his role in Chairing the ACMD and he referred to the Council as ‘we’ repeatedly during the presentation. Therefore, the impression could easily be given that Professor Nutt was speaking in his capacity of Chair of the ACMD, regardless of how the lecture was advertised.

Your letter states there were no references to Ms Smith in Professor Nutt’s lecture, but three references to the ‘former Home Secretary’. This is true, although Professor Nutt did refer to the former Home Secretary, alongside quotes from Jacqui Smith in the paper, so it is clear to whom he is referring. In addition, Professor Nutt’s Guardian article and Press Release for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies paper both mention Jacqui Smith by name. These criticise her stance on cannabis being to ‘err on the side of caution’. This is the explanation of why the Government rejected the ACMD’s advice on cannabis, in that it is not prepared to risk the health of our young people. Professor Nutt’s paper, on page 8, criticises this stance as to ‘devalue the evidence’.  I completely refute the fact that erring on the side of caution to protect the health of our young people in anyway devalues or distorts the evidence – we make decisions in the full confidence that they will protect the public.

Comment:

The Slides for the presentation on the 14th July were actually prepared with the ACMD secretariat.

The paper published on 29^th October was a translation of the transcript of the lecture, attended by the ACMD secretariat (Will Reynolds and Ian Williams), with some of the slides used as illustrations. It was published on 29^th October by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies as is usual with this lecture series and press release was produced by them. It is not required by the Code of Practice for Prof Nutt to provide prior notification or approval of the Home Office for papers produced by others based on a lecture itself notified to the Home Office and produced with their assistance.

If a “debate on drugs policy was initiated” by Professor Nutt, it was initiated in his lecture on 14^th July not by the publication by a third party of that lecture three months later.

The article in the Guardian was – as it states – an edited version of the paper which is in turn based on the transcript of the lecture.

Prof Nutt was described in the flyer for the lecture and in the paper as  Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging at Imperial College London. Any reference to his chairing the ACMD was biographical. This role was prominent only in the Home Office’s own advert – a point not addressed by the Home Secretary.

Richard Garside (Director of the CCJS at King’s College) says:

“We were very clear in (1) the original event flyer and material; (2) the press release; and (3) the published version of the speech that Professor Nutt was contributing in his academic capacity. It is as simple as that. The reference to Professor Nutt’s ACMD role were biographical and contextual on the website page the Home Secretary refers to (I assume it is http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/evesavillelecture.html ). There was a similar biographical reference in the notes to editors in the press release. It is therefore simply false to claim that the impression was ‘easily given’ that he was speaking in his capacity as ACMD chair.

We also went to lengths on the day of publication to ensure that David Nutt was not interpreted as speaking for the ACMD. The Guardian article, for instance, was edited down from David’s briefing by Matt Seaton, the Comment Editor. I signed it off on behalf of David. In the original draft that Matt did, the second paragraph started: ‘The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), on which I serve, was requested by the Home Secretary…’. I asked Matt to remove ‘on which I serve’ to avoid misunderstanding about the capacity in which David was writing. Likewise in the third para from the end, a reference to and ACMD report that Matt described as ‘our report’ was corrected to ‘the ACMD’s report’.

We therefore went to some lengths to be clear about the capacity in which David was speaking and writing. It might be possible for individuals to conclude that he was speaking in his ACMD role. CCJS and David Nutt can’t be held responsible for others misinterpreting what we published or David Nutt spoke or wrote.”

In the paper and in the lecture, the use of “we” in respect of the ACMD was only in relation to factual matters about the work that the ACMD had carried out; the rest of lecture set out his own views or those of his co-authors of the Lancet paper. Any perusal of the Paper or viewing of the slides will not provide support for the idea that Prof Nutt was speaking in his role as Chair of the ACMD.

By the Home Secretary’s standards a member of the ACMD will always be speaking in their ACMD role, when they speak on matters relating to illegal drugs and their classification.

The Home Secretary enters a debate about the value of erring on the side of caution which is of academic interest but of no relevance as to whether Prof Nutt is entitled to criticise what he considers to be an over-precautionary approach. In his paper Prof Nutt does criticise indirectly the previous Home Secretary’s approach, and the press release from CCJS which summaruises the paper, criticises that approach more directly. Neither accuses the previous Home Secretary of “distorting and devaluing scientific research”. The Home Secretary admits that the most the paper does (on page 8 ) is to criticise the stance adopted by the Home Secretary as to “devalue the evidence”.

Conclusions

a. Prof Nutt did not speak at the CCJS lecture as Chair of the ACMD, nor did he advertise himself as so doing, or give that impression. Therefore he was under no obligation to notify the Home Office – although he did.

b. Contrary to what the Home Secretary told the House, Prof Nutt did provide prior notification to the Home Office of his paper even though he was under no obligation to do so.

c. Prof Nutt was entitled to criticise the former Home Secretary of “distorting and devaluing scientific research” as the Home Secretary accused him of doing, if he wished to do so, but in fact his criticism was that her policy served to “devalue the evidence”.  So the House was misled by the Home Secretary on this point.

Objection raised to Home Secretary

3. You stated that the former Home Secretary – Jacqui Smith- had protested to Professor Nutt concerning the comparison in the Journal of Psychopharmacology article of the risks of ecstasy with the risks of horse-riding. You then went on: “In relation to the latest event, that behaviour has happened again. Professor Nutt is a man whom I respect, and he is very learned in his field, but, much to my regret, he published a paper without any notification to my Department, contrary to the code of practice under which he was appointed”.

This is incorrect. There was no evidence at the time or now that any of those events involved a breach of the Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees or the ACMD by Prof Nutt, and this is reinforced by the fact that neither Home Secretary in either of their letters to him has made this allegation, and nor did you raise it in your recent and only meeting with Prof Nutt. Yet if this allegation were made outside the House, it would be actionable given the slur on Professor Nutt’s reputation.

Response from Home Secretary

3. I refer to my answer to the point above with regard to publishing both the King’s College, paper and the Guardian article. You state that this did not breach the ACMD’s Code of Practice. Can I refer you to paragraph 48 of the ACMD’s  Code, which states, ‘Any media appearances that members have been asked to undertake on behalf of the ACMD, or which specifically cover the work of the ACMD should be reported beforehand to the Secretariat.

Comment

It is very clear from David Nutt’s paper and his media interviews on 29^th and 30^th October that he was not undertaking media appearances ’on behalf of the ACMD’ nor were his media appearances ’specifically’ to ‘cover the work of the ACMD’. He was undertaking media appearances to present his thinking, first set out in a presentation the Home Office helped to produce and indicated it had no problem with, to a wider audience, as an independent academic.

Conclusion

a. There was prior notification of the paper based on the lecture that the Home Office helped to prepare and House was misled.

b. There was no breach of the Code of Practice and the House was misled

Objection raised to Home Secretary

4. You stated: “Our principal advisers—whether Sir David King, John Beddington, Sir Liam Donaldson or Professor Nutt—have to be clear that when they are appointed to such a crucial and privileged job—When such esteemed professionals take on such a job, they have the Government’s ear. They have a very important role in influencing the Government, and they must exercise it with care and caution. It would be quite wrong for advisers to undermine the Government as well as advise them.”

Professor Nutt is not a full-time Government or Departmental Chief Science Adviser within the civil service, but an unpaid part-time adviser paid as an academic. You confuse the two roles. Nor has Prof Nutt campaigned against Government policy. One academic paper and one lecture in one’s area of expertise do not constitute a campaign, especially as both the paper and the lecture were notified to the ACMD secretariat and beyond in the Home Office and the content discussed and approved.

Response from Home Secretary

4. In your letter you accuse me of confusing roles.  I am in no way confused about the role Professor Nutt held.  He was chair of my advisory committee and chose to campaign against decisions my predecessor had taken, not just through a lecture and a paper but through a series of media appearances, an article and a press release.  Although, as stated above, the lecture was notified to the secretariat in June, the paper and the Guardian article in October were not.

Comment

The Home Secretary does not explain why he compared Prof Nutt’s role as an unpaid independent scientific adviser to that of paid civil servants working for the Government.

The Home Secretary considers that a lecture (prepared with the help of Home Office staff) and a paper based on it, advertised as being in an academic role, together with a press article on the same subject and a third party press release summarising the same represents a campaign.

Conclusion

On this basis the Home Secretary would consider any academic lecture or paper which disagreed with Government policy and was reported in the media to be a campaign against policy decisions and seeking to undermine the Government. This is paranoid control freakery.

Objection raised to Home Secretary

5. You stated: “My final point is about what Professor Nutt did last week at King’s college; incidentally, he was opposed by Professor Robin Murray, the head of psychiatric research, who takes a completely different view.”

This is incorrect. As we saw above, the King’s College event was four months ago not last week. Professor Robin Murray was not there.

Response from Home Secretary

5. Professor Robin Murray did, indeed, oppose Professor Nutt’s comments. These were made in the Guardian on 30 October and Professor Murray does take a different view on cannabis to Professor Nutt.

Comment

The Home Secretary does not deal the error he made I talking about an event at King’s College “last week”, when the lecture took place in July. He does not admit he was wrong to suggest that Prof Murray was present at the lecture speaking against Prof Nutt.

Conclusion

The House was misled.

Overall conclusions

There is no good evidence or argument that Prof Nutt breached the Code of Practice and indeed there are good grounds for recognising that he went to considerable lengths – beyond those required – to inform the Home Office at a senior level of his paper and his lecture, and to make clear the capacity in which he was speaking or writing.

He was therefore unfairly treated by being accused of breaches of the code and of “campaigning” and therefore unfairly dismissed.

The Home Secretary then compounded this by making misleading or wrong statements in Parliament and not correcting the record when these were pointed out to him.

Prepared by Dr Evan Harris MP in consultation with Prof D. Nutt and Mr R. Garside

I bet Johnson hates Harris!