Getting high on MDMA is less dangerous that horse riding. Pointing out that statistical fact famously got Professor David Nutt fired from his role as drugs advisor to Tony Blair’s government. Last week he was all over the papers again, as misquoted source of the ‘cocaine caused the banking crash’ story.
As usual, the press angle on drugs is hysterical almost by definition. Science and facts ignored for a hardline headline. Therefore the opportunity to see the controversial Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology (try saying that when under the influence) speak in KT last week was a rare chance to hear some of his findings, spin-free.
He talked for an hour, during which time he dropped some pupil-dilating statistics, laid into the alcohol industry and made certain politicians look painfully hypocritical.
You can enjoy the video stream of the full lecture here:
There was also a Q&A session (not streamed), which revealed the sold-out crowd of Kentishtowners to be a pleasingly diverse bunch. Silver-haired stoners sat alongside keen young psychologists, teenage kids beside eminent neuroscientists, all perched under the blowy marquee in the Flaxon Ptootch garden.
Hairdresser cum gallery impresario Michael Ptootch has been known to throw a wild party or two in this sprawling Kentish Town space, but we haven’t seen him as giddy as he was to host this occasion.
Nutt may be tickled by his own celebrity, but he also speaks a rare common sense on this topic, based on the very latest research rather than the usual misguided/alarmist reasoning for ongoing prohibition.
As he highlights, with the UK alcohol industry covertly funding anti-drugs messages to avoid losing market share (such as the Leah Betts ‘Sorted’ campaign), and size of America’s drugs enforcement industry roughly the same as the UK army, there are powerful economic reasons for the status quo to remain.
Embarrassingly, some of the recent UK drug legislation has been among the most blinkered and potentially harmful to date, criminalising yet more people and throwing up all sorts of unforeseen outcomes. For example, when mephedrone was able to be purchased legally online (the so-called “plant food”), cocaine deaths dropped for the first time in years, a stat that any government should really have been pleased with. Now the substance is Class A, the coke death rate has returned.
The progressive Prof knows it would be “easy” to create “much safer, much better highs” than the ones currently experimented with – a far better result for public health. Let alone the potential for treatment of a variety of illnesses if research into prohibited substances was easier.
Whether that sort of seismic cultural shift happens in our lifetimes remains very much unknown. But if you believe that intoxication and altered perception is a basic human right, if you’re shocked that three under 18s die of alcohol poisoning every week in this country yet nobody will be criminalised for the supply of that drug, if you agree that the current legislation is having the very opposite of the desired effect, then you should be listening out for Nutt. He says he’s about to publish an article for which the powers that be may wish to “lock me in the tower”.
In fact, politicians would do well to drop a cheeky half of humble pie, and get him back on board.
Meanwhile, we look forward to the next cerebral evening in the Flaxon Ptootch garden. Read all about the latest alternative drugs policy thinking, plus buy the Professor’s book at drugscience.org.uk
Words & Pics: Tom Kihl
3 thoughts on “Drugs with Professor David Nutt in the Flaxon Ptootch Garden”
Is Nutt appropriately named?
I would say so. Why all his self publicity? Why does he associate with a woman who drilled a hole in her own skull (Amanda Neidpath of Beckley Foundation).
What exactly is his crusade all about?
Does he WANT more people to use MORE drugs?
Ok Chris, I’ll play into your hands…
I want people to use more drugs.
When I say drugs, I don’t mean cocaine, heroine or crack, I mean drugs like MDMA etc. (and don’t say its a “gateway drug”, as that’s as true of alcohol and caffeine as anything else).
I want this for a number of reasons, not least because its so utterly infuriating to hear people harp on about DRUGS!!! while they’re drinking wine and smoking a cigarette.
It is a fact that MDMA is less harmful than horse-riding. It is a fact that alcohol and tobacco are more harmful to health than MDMA, Cannabis, Magic Mushrooms etc.
It is extremely alarming that Prof. Nutt was sacked for giving his scientific opinion.
Prior to reading this article I didn’t know the statistic regarding cocaine deaths and methodrone legality, they are truly shocking. This is the thing that anti-drugs people don’t get:
You are killing people.
Yes, you.
We have the ability, as Nutt says, to manufacture safe highs. We have the power to take drugs that are already safe (e.g. MDMA) and regulate them, stop them from being cut with damaging fillers, give instructions on how to use them safely, monitor their usage.
There has never in the history of mankind been a death from magic mushroom usage, yet they were made illegal a few years back. Why? Please tell me as I’d love to know.
Not one single person who has ever died an MDMA related death has died from the MDMA itself. They have died from undetected pre-existing conditions that could just as easily have been triggered by a work-out, from over heating from not drinking enough water, and (as in Leah Betts’ case) reacting to scare stories in the press about Ecstasy deaths and drinking so much water your brain expands inside your skull.
We have the power to stop every single one of these deaths.
We can do this through proper education (not the “drugs are bad” non-education they doled out in schools when I was there in the 90s). We can do this through regulation. Through legalisation.
However, despite having the power to actually help people, we choose instead to do what the tobacco and liquor industries ask us to do – take a hard line on “drugs” (alcohol and tobacco of course excluded, despite being two of the most harmful drugs out there).
Don’t get me started on what this approach does to people in drug producing countries, that’s another conversation. But, don’t you find it disturbing that our government and our press would rather people died than accept that people enjoy using drugs other than alcohol and tobacco? Don’t you find it disturbing that the millions of deaths from alcohol and tobacco are ignored by the press while a single death that might have possibly been DRUG!!! gets hysterical coverage for weeks on end? Of course, when it is inevitable discovered that the drug in question was not responsible for the death at all, the press prints nothing.
We are being lied to and it is killing people. Study, regulate and monitor drugs. People have the right to put what they want into their own body without being criminalised, they have the right to know that it has been medically tested, and they have the right to know how best to use it.
So let’s take the drugs trade out of the hands of criminals, who murder and exploit people, who cut otherwise safe drugs with poison. Lets put drugs into pharmacies, lets tax them, make pharmacists explain the usage to patients at the counter (as they already do with the morning after pill).
If we do this, I promise you, drug death rates will fall so drastically you’ll be astounded.
But of course we won’t, we’re too stupid, hypocritical and cruel to do that.
So yes, I want people to take more drugs. I want people to have fun on Magic Mushrooms or MDMA every now and then, instead of drinking themselves into a stupor. Not only will it be better for their health, but they will see the world with new eyes. They’ll see that they’re being lied to out of a mix of stupidity, prudishness, fear, ignorance, and most disturbingly of all, corporate interest.
A nice utterly mindless rant. Deeply illustrative of why the UK has so much of a problem with drugs, legal and illegal.
These substances are not fit for human consumption. Tobacco is not suitable for human consumption and alcohol is only suitable in very modest quantities and only then for those who have the genetic adapation to it.
Both tobacco and alcohol consimption in the Uk are going down.
We need less consumption of all drugs, not more.
As for taking the drugs trade out of the hands of criminality.
Like we did with the beef trade you mean?
You need to engage your brain, write less and think more.