(New Scientist) IF THERE is one thing that politicians can and should do to limit the damage caused by illegal drugs, it is to take careful note of the evidence and develop a rational drug policy. Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead.

I can trace the beginning of the end of my role as chairman of the UK’s official advisory body on drugs to the moment I quoted a New Scientist editorial (14 February, p 5). Entitled, fittingly enough, “Drugs drive politicians out of their minds”, the editorial asked the reader to imagine being seated at a table with two bowls, one containing peanuts, the other the illegal drug MDMA (ecstasy). Which is safer to give to a stranger? Why, the ecstasy of course.

I quoted these words in the Eve Saville lecture at King’s College London in July. This example plus other comments I have made – such as horse riding is more harmful than ecstasy – prompted Alan Johnson, the home secretary, to say that I had crossed the line from science to policy. This, he said, is why I had to go.

But simple, accurate and understandable statements of scientific fact are precisely what the advisory council is supposed to provide. Why would any scientist take up some future offer of a government advisory post when their advice can be treated with such disdain?

The results of a government inventing its own reality and acting on it can be seen in the appalling consequences the George W. Bush presidency had for world peace, the environment and human rights. The message for the British government is a simple one: don’t exclude rational argument in order to exploit a visceral public response. Politicians have to win the hearts and minds of their electorate. If your policy is informed by an underlying moral imperative, be open about what that is, and don’t try to disguise it with a veneer of pseudo-science. We ignore scientific evidence at our peril.

David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, was chairman of the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs until he was dismissed last week by the UK home secretary

It’s a message President Obama needs to hear as well.  He promised to return us from the George W. Bush presidency’s disdain for rational thought and scientific evidence.  Obama promised to base our policies on sound science with respect to global climate change and other issues.  But stubbornly, this administration’s drug czar is still out parroting the completely unscientific falsehood that “the raw cannabis plant is certainly not medicine”.  Obama himself is laughing off the notion of marijuana legalization as having any economic benefit to cash-strapped states, despite the rational analysis by many prominent economists.  And despite the evidence of reduced social farms in the Netherlands, Portugal, and other countries that have experimented with drug decriminalization and tolerance, Obama continues to push a federal policy that relies heavily on interdiction and incarceration.

For over a century now, every time hard scientists, social scientists, economists, and policy experts gather to take a rational and scientific look at marijuana policy, they recommend decriminalization and tolerance or they recognize medical usage of cannabis, from the 1894 British East India survey to the 1942 Laguardia Commission to the 1972 Shaffer Commission to the 1999 Institute of Medicine study.  Cannabis can no longer be the exception to the “we believe in science” rule!

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The latest study by Jon Gettman at DrugScience.org documents what we all know: adult marijuana prohibition does not work – even when measured by the prohibitionist’s own standards.  In 2002, the Bush Administration laid out their two-year goal, a 10% reduction in illegal drug use, and a five-year goal, a 25% reduction in illegal drug use.  Gettman lays out the case for their failure using their own statistics.

The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform
1. Failure to Reduce Marijuana Use

The Bush Administration has failed to reduce or control marijuana use in the United States. Marginal changes in marijuana and other drug use have been distorted to support inflated claims of progress in reducing marijuana and other drug use. Marijuana use is fundamentally the same as when the Bush Administration took office, and illicit drug use overall has increased.

• In 2007 there were 14.5 million current users of marijuana in the United States, compared with 14.6 million in 2002. From 2002 to 2007 annual use of marijuana declined slightly from 25.9 to 25.1 million. The number of Americans who have used marijuana at some point in their lives actually increased, from 95 million in 2002 to over 100 million in 2007.

• Teenage marijuana use remains a serious problem in the United States. One in nine (12%) 14- and 15-year-olds and one in four (23.7%) 16- and 17-year-olds used marijuana in 2007.

• There were 35.7 million annual illicit drug users in the United States in 2007, 14.4% of the population. Individuals who only use marijuana account for 41% of all annual illicit drug users. While 10.5 million people used marijuana and at least one other illegal drug (29% of all illicit drug users), there were 10.6 million people (30%) who used illegal drugs but did not use marijuana.

• There were 472,000 12- and 13-year-olds and 627,000 14- and 15-year-olds who did not use marijuana in 2006 but still used illegal drugs. Nearly half of these individuals used inhalants and illegally obtained pain relief drugs.

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