In 1775, Percivall Pott found a link between soot and scrotal cancer. The surgeon’s insight led to the 1788 Chimney Sweepers Act, probably the first legislation that could claim to be, in modern Whitehall lingo, evidence-based. In the two centuries since, politicians have learned to pick and choose the advice they follow, and use scientists as cover for awkward decisions—making the furore over government drugs adviser David Nutt’s sacking all the more curious.
Nutt has framed his October dismissal by the home secretary Alan Johnson as a conflict between politics and science. Referring to the 2008 decision to upgrade cannabis from a C to a B class drug he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “this is the first government that has ever in the history of the Misuse of Drugs Act gone against the advice of its scientific panel.” He also accused the government of a similar sin in continuing to label ecstasy as a class A drug, and of “making scientific decisions before they’ve even consulted with their experts.” He later wrote that “my sacking has cast a huge shadow over the relationship of science to policy.”
There have been two different assumptions underlying the way that Nutt has framed his own demise. The first is that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), from which he was dismissed, is a scientific body. The second is that drug classification is itself a scientific question. Both are open to debate.
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