“Think cannabis is harmless?” No. Does anyone? But what about propagating...
A week ago, the Daily Mail published a story entitled“Think cannabis is harmless? It drove this grammar school boy insane – then killed him”. This is not the first time that the Mail and other...
View ArticleIf 5% of a drug's content isn't right, users may distrust it. Perhaps the...
Cherry Healey: Old Before My Time, BBC3Production by Silver River TV (@silverrivertv)Monday 28th October 2013The BBC deserves its reputation for bringing us some of the world’s best science...
View ArticleStanding up for Science
Why David won the John Maddox Standing up for Science AwardOur cultural imagination features some odd and rather unflattering stereotypes of scientists; the socially awkward oddballs out of touch with...
View ArticleHelp me in my ambition to be uncontroversial
I’m very grateful for having been awarded the John Maddox prize. The award has caused me to reflect on the role of science in the public discourse, and evidence in politics, to ask what Standing up for...
View ArticleScheduling clash: revisiting ketamine (and legislation) harms
It was announced today that ketamine will be reclassified to Class B, up from C. But that's not the whole story.Drug classification, which determines the penalties for illicit recreational use, makes...
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Death by cannabis?
(UPDATE 04/02/2014 - The Metro brought balance to their coverage by publishing letters today from Prof. David Nutt (see picture below) and other readers on the subject of the risks of cannabis. The...
View ArticleMichael Le Vell – double standards over the ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ of drugs
ISCD volunteer Richard Clifton takes a look at drugs in the news.In recent years, it seems that Coronation Street is never very far away from a drug scandal, and now Michael Le Vell has become the...
View Article“Ravaged by drugs”? Let’s spread facts, not fear; science, not stigma
Today the Mail, Telegraph and others have been featuring the vile and dehumanising "More than Meth" campaign, which invites us to gasp and be disgusted by the faces of Americans arrested for drug...
View ArticleThe unexpected truth about drugs
Our job at DrugScience is bringing you the scientific truth about drugs. But the scientific truth isn’t a completed body of knowledge like a bible. When scientists talk about ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ they...
View ArticleIt’s time for a drug revolution
Who controls drugs? Who controls whether you take drugs, what you take, and what the consequences are? The answers are of course, pretty complex. Governments play a part as do drug producers and...
View ArticleIt’s Gardeners’ Question Time!
Today’s first question;- Why are there still journalists who try to cultivate public fears and hack back at the flourishing of public understanding? The Mail on Sunday today invented a “storm” of...
View ArticleUnholy Smoke? Why does the USA fear vaping?
As a research psychiatrist who has spent most of my professional life looking for ways to mitigate the harms of addictive drugs, the concept of replacing a very harmful drug such as heroin with a safer...
View ArticleBlinded by smoke? Why do e-cigarettes provoke such irrational reactions?
A key question in the current debate about the growing use of e-cigarettes or ENDS [electronic nicotine delivery systems] is their safety as compared with cigarettes and other nicotine delivery systems...
View ArticleHere’s Why We Hear So Many False Claims About Cannabis
As a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, I study the impact of drug use on the brain. Like many scientists studying these issues, the results I detect in my lab have direct...
View ArticleMulti Criteria Decision Analysis [MCDA] – making the best of uncertainty for...
Today the BMJ publishes an authored analysis that recapitulates the claims of an editorial in the Lancet two weeks ago that our MCDA analysis of the comparative harms of nicotine products was...
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