There are two excellent pieces by Brendan O’Neill in this week’s Sp!ked about the egregious Professor David Nutt:
- David Nutt is not the new Galileo
- The curious Cult of Nutt, backed by both dopeheads and scientists, is actually denigrating scientific truth.
- Nutts to these anti-alcohol ‘experts’
- Last night’s David Nutt debate confirmed that cannabis is now promoted as a means of pacifying young, drunk ruffians.
The event provided an insight into what is driving the pro-dope movement today, that strange mix of scientists and politicians (who are at least sympathetic to cannabis) and social workers and students (who are champions of it): it is not freedom, or even hedonism, but Booze Prohibitionism. They promote cannabis as a way of denigrating alcohol. Professor Nutt explicitly said that the government’s attacks on cannabis are a ‘distraction from getting alcohol misuse under control’. Alcohol should also be part of the Misuse of Drugs Act, he said, since it is the ‘most damaging drug’ for young people in particular.Why anyone claiming to be a defender of pubs and beer should give a second’s consideration to the views of this odious man completely eludes me.
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Yes. I was going to blog on the same thing. Glad you picked it up too. For me, Brendan's second article is the final word on the Nutt affair.
ReplyDeleteLegalising cannabis is an article of principle for ageing '60s radicals and vigorous young BBC staffers alike. Their tolerance to this particular substance is one of the few things that makes them believe (quite wrongly IMO) that they are liberals. Hence, Nutt is their hero
Like their opposition to nuclear power (see Diane Abbot's hilarious arguments on This Week last night), defending 'pot' is an integral part of the donkey-jacket brigade's political make-up. The thing is, I happen to agree that cannabis shouldn't be a class C drug as well. I just don't want to see a crack-down elsewhere to make way for it. But then I actually am a liberal (in the uncorrupted sense of the word).
I actually have a certain amount of sympathy for the view that cannabis should be legalised - but its supporters do themselves no favours in my eyes by using "it is less dangerous than alcohol" as one of the main planks of their argument. An appeal to the principle of liberty would be much more convincing.
ReplyDeleteI also suspect that if cannabis was legalised, it would become impossible for cannabis users to hold down most kinds of responsible job because employers would introduce an overt testing regime - the dope lobby need to be careful what they wish for.
I previously mentioned the issue here.