David Nutt and Evan Harris at #sitp Westminster

I had the very great pleasure of listening to two first-rate speakers at Skeptics in the Pub Westminster this evening – Professor David Nutt and Dr Evan Harris MP.

Professor Nutt went through the advice that had been given by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to Alan Johnson and the frankly poor way in which that advice was dealt with, as well as briefly mentioning why he was sacked. As Evan Harris pointed out, this was largely for publishing an article in a scientific journal whose readership is not large.

The professor kindly agreed to send me his slides, so I will post them here in due course rather than rehashing his speech. Suffice to say, only one drug has been reclassified downwards (cannabis, from B to C, and only for a brief period) and there are some classifications that make no sense when presented with the evidence. The overall result is a chaotic and incomprehensible system that unnecessarily criminalises people while failing to actually reduce harms.

Dr Nutt thought that a lot of the obsession with stronger and stronger sentences came from the media over-representing how often people died from drugs. He cited a study showing that deaths from some drugs – ecstasy and so on – were proportionately reported far more often than some others.

Dr Harris explained how this poor handling of scientific & evidential advice was, regrettably, far from unique, highlighting the example of laws on prostitution. I found Dr Harris’s statement that he was entirely happy for people to reject a policy on an ideological basis, so long as they didn’t pretend to have evidentiary support, remarkably sensible.

One of the most worrying things to come out of the evening was the extent to which the police had been politicised to support ‘toughening’ their position on drugs. It would seem that they didn’t use to mind some drugs, as their users were at least less violent than alcohol users, but had had pressure put on them to continuously support harsher sentencing etc.. This may have had something to do with increased police powers. Dr Harris made the very good point that Parliament is not there just to agree with the police.

The House of Commons Science & Technology Committee’s Report on Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence-based Policy of 2006 was mentioned several times. The report makes some excellent recommendations but, for the purposes of this event, the main one was that ministers should not say that evidence supported their position when it did not.

In Dr Harris’ view, much of the problem came from the lack of understanding amongst ministers, with a couple of notable exceptions, of the scientific method, the importance of peer review & publication and so on. He also felt that the Thatcher government was better than the current administration on evidence-based policy; for instance, instituting needle exchanges.

Professor Nutt and Dr Harris did a hilarious double-act, with Harris playing himself and Nutt Vernon Coaker MP, the minister in front of the committee. Unfortunately, the text was an actual transcript of a committee meeting. Suffice to say that Coaker’s circular logic did not make him come off well.

I asked a couple of questions – under what circumstances should the government go against expert evidence and what lessons could be drawn from the Portuguese experience? (Drugs have been decriminalised in Portugal.)

I think I may have phrased my question badly, as Dr Harris reiterated his points about the S&T Committee’s report – that ministers shouldn’t say policy is evidence based when it is not. That was not, however, what I wanted to ask; implicit in that conclusion was the notion that policies could be made that were not supported by evidence; I wanted to know in what cases that could happen.

Professor Nutt said that the policies implemented in Portugal were interesting and had good evidence to show that they were reducing drug-taking. A member of a UN panel – I didn’t catch the name – had said something similar. He indicated that similar policies could potentially be good for the UK.

A very interesting comparison was made by Dr Harris between the misapplication of the precautionary principle on drugs and on same-sex marriages and adoption; he favoured presumption of non-discrimination until harm shown rather than discrimination until harm shown to be absent.

During his speech, Dr Harris asked if there were any Labour members present (one hand apart from me) and said that this wasn’t going to be fun for us. I prefaced my questions by saying that that sort of comment was unhelpful.

For the record, I think both the actual decision made by Alan Johnson and the way it was reached and explained were poor. I am not the only person who thinks this in the Labour Party who thinks this. I prefaced my question by saying that branding all Labour members as credulous troglodytes, as Harris was effectively doing, was not helpful. I accept much of what Harris said – the Labour party isn’t as democratic as it was, is tired after so much time in power – but I maintain that by turning this, even slightly, into a partisan issue, making it harder to promote skepticism in the Labour party, is unhelpful. Given that the LibDems are not immune from woo, it is also somewhat hypocritical.

A lot of people seemed to wonder how on earth Alan Johnson reached his decision. The answer, IMHO, is obvious: he’d have been slaughtered in the press, or at least certain sections of it, if he did anything to liberalise the taking of drugs. This raises three questions that were only briefly touched on;
– why are governments so obssessed with the opinion of newspapers, and particularly Labour with the Mail, Express and Sun when their readers don’t vote Labour anyway;
– how do we make the newspapers more responsible in their coverage (in science, particularly)
– given that (2) is bloody hard, how do we make people more aware of good & bad science?

Both Nutt and Harris were funny, informative and informed. Both deserve praise for their strong defences of good, skeptical principles, but Professor Nutt must receive special praise for his bravery in fighting his corner and resolutely refusing to be cowed.

Quote of the evening has to go to Dr Harris – “I rely on Oxford being full of gay, atheist, asylum seekers”.

It was a pleasure to meet the people behind the excellent Daily Quail and Five Chinese Crackers, as well as to see stalwarts Carmen Ego, Crispian Jago and master of ceremonies Jack of Kent.