Government vs science over drug and alcohol policy.

摘要

My statement in October that alcohol was more dangerous than many illegal drugs, including cannabis, ecstasy, and LSD, referred back to a paper I published in The Lancet 2 years ago. It would be an understatement, given the political, media, and academic interest, to say that i stirred up a hornets' nest in the UK Parliament and elsewhere. The Honie Secretary, Alan Johnson, sacked me from my role as chair of the ACMD (the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, on which I had served with distinction for 10 years), and the Conservative shadow minister said it should have happened earlier this year when I published a paper comparing the harms of ecstasy and another addiction (which I had termed "equasy"-ie, horse riding).