We like to think we live in an age of reason, so why is our attitude to drugs plagued by irrationality? Why have successive governments refused to act, and what are the implications for science and for society?

Leading pharmacologist David Nutt speaks to the IAI about the irrationality at the heart of current drug policy, why it matters, and what an evidence-based approach to drugs policy would actually look like.

Nutt is a fierce proponent of rational, science-based drugs policy. He worked as an advisor to the Ministry of Defence, Department of Health and the Home Office under the last Labour government, but repeatedly clashed with ministers over issues of drug harm and classification. In 2009, Nutt published a paper in which he compared the dangers of taking ecstasy with those of horse riding. Shortly after, he was infamously sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, prompting a host of resignations.

Nutt is now chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, which he founded in 2010. His book, Drugs without the Hot Air, won the Transmission Prize for Communicating Science in 2014.

Tobias Phibbs: What do you see as the major consequences of our current drug policy of prohibition?

The policy has completely destroyed 50 years of research on a whole range of important drugs, particularly cannabis. It’s some of the greatest censorship of research in the history of humankind.

TP: You advocate an evidence-based approach to drug policy. What would that look like?

Anything less harmful than alcohol would be available from pharmacists, but alcohol would be controlled more severely and only sold in licensed premises, not in supermarkets. It would also include rapidly increasingly the availability of tobacco alternatives.

TP: There are all kinds of factors relating to the effects of drug intake on culture, on interpersonal relationships and so on, that seem very hard to quantify. How do we avoid a crude utilitarianism when discussing the impact of drugs, and the drug policy we consequently advocate?

This is a very good question. The key thing is that we cannot let the odd individual reaction dictate policy on one drug, like ecstasy. For example, under the last government, Tony Blair said ecstasy killed Leah Betts, which it didn’t, but he said it to appease the family and to appease the right-wing press. No politician is going to say that 20,000 people a year die prematurely because of alcohol, even though it’s the leading cause of death in men under the age of 50. They never say anything about that because there’s a smokescreen, a conspiracy of silence around the harms of alcohol. We’ve got to talk about these drugs in the same way, analyse their harms the same way. We’ve got to take the personal out of it and focus on the population as a whole.

TP: Do you think things are moving in the right direction in terms of drugs legislation?

No, we’re going backwards. The UN are planning to ban Ketamine completely now. Ketamine is the only non-sedative opiate in the world, and they want to ban it because it’s now used recreationally. Against the advice of the World Health Organisation, they’re going to make Ketamine a Schedule 1 drug of the UN Convention – that will stop all research and all treatment worldwide.