REMOVAL RISKS DISCOURAGING EXPERTS FROM GIVING OPINION

David Nutt may be outspoken - increasingly so in recent years - but
his appointment as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs was based on his standing as a psychiatrist and
pharmacologist.

He was appointed to the independent body given the task of providing
scientific ballast to the formation of government policy. He has
written on the relative harms of alcohol, Ecstasy and other drugs,
based on a 30-year research career.

That his views were at odds with the Government was clear, but that
did not stop them being credible and valuable. Did ministers really
expect Professor Nutt to stop speaking about drugs and risks, even in
a personal capacity, or to stop publishing peer-reviewed papers? They
can't have believed so.

The timing of his comments, and their vociferousness, may have been
born of exasperation. He was not simply ignored by Government but
publicly admonished.

When he wrote controversially about the relative dangers of
horse-riding and Ecstasy this year he could have expected criticism.
But to be told by Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, to make a public
apology for an editorial published in the Journal of
Psychopharmacology was beyond the pale.

Such a relationship was going to end only one way. Professor Nutt
jabbed his points home to the embarrassment of ministers devising
policies that did not fit with expertise they received.But his sacking
risks discouraging more experts from venturing near a domain where
they might have to tailor a lifetime's work accordingly.