WHAT'S BRIT PM BEEN SMOKING?

Politicians hate it when experts shine the light of truth on
supposedly unimpeachable government ideology.

The British government had a hissy fit when its top drug policy
advisor suggested the U.K.'s drug classification system doesn't make
sense.

David Nutt had the temerity to question the government's decision to
bump marijuana into a more dangerous drug category.

And he had the nerve to state publicly that tobacco and booze are more
dangerous than pot.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD

So it was off with Nutt's head, figuratively speaking, of
course.

While Britain doesn't chop off people's heads anymore because that's,
well, backwards, it's having a little trouble refashioning drug policy
for the 21st century.

Nutt was the chair of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs.

Two of his colleagues on the panel have reportedly resigned,
complaining that the government is pressuring the council to
politicize drug policy issues.

One wonders why the U.K. has a drug advisory board if it doesn't
really want any advice.

"We cannot send out a message to young people that it's OK to
experiment with drugs and to move on to hard drugs," declared Prime
Minister Gordon Brown.

"We have to send out a message to young people that it's simply not
acceptable."

What has Brown been smoking?

Drug policy experts don't go around promoting drug
use.

The braver ones, however, do point out the absurdity of the world's
drug laws.

The ones that do the most damage -- booze and tobacco -- are legal and
often the drugs that do minimal harm, like marijuana, are
characterized as substances that will lead you down the inevitable
path to hard drugs and eventual death.

Nutt, who is not at all nutty, despite what the British government
believes, has proposed that all drugs -- legal and illegal -- be
classified according to their harm.

That would mean, presumably, that tobacco and alcohol would be at the
top, heroin and cocaine would be in the middle somewhere and the least
dangerous drugs, like pot, would be at the bottom.

But science and politics have never mixed well, which is why neither
Britain, Canada nor the U.S. are in a hurry to place controls on drugs
that are proportional to their harm.

"Our laws have nothing to do with health considerations or
pharmacology," says Benedikt Fischer, a drug policy expert at Simon
Fraser University.

"It reflects politics from 100 years ago."

Earlier this year, actually, Fischer sat on a panel with Nutt on this
very issue at a drug conference in Vienna.

"He's a very credible, internationally known scientist," says
Fischer.

"I was quite surprised to read that (he'd been fired). I always
thought that the British at least still had that much respect for science."

Canada doesn't have a drug advisory council but it could sure use one
to push the envelope a bit on drug policy reform.

On the other hand, if we did have such a panel and someone on it as
outspoken as Nutt, "he'd be gone pretty soon," quips Fischer.

DRUG POLICY FOOLISH

Meanwhile, science and reality continue to make our drug policy look
foolish.

Several years ago, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse released a
study on the costs of substance abuse.

In 2002, more than 37,000 Canadians died from tobacco use and another
4,000 died from booze-related causes. In contrast, less than 1,700
Canadians (.8% of all deaths) succumbed from illegal drug use.

Politicians would rather shuffle an inconvenient scientist out of the
way than confront the truth.