Wither the ACMD?
The sacking of David Nutt has laid bare some uncomfortable truths for the future of the ACMD. The meeting with the Home Secretary and officials focused on protocols, principles and generally clearing the air. But it remains that whoever wins the next election, any recommendations that a drug be re-graded downwards will likely be rejected, allowing only for initial control or more punitive penalties, very much against the spirit of the three tier classification system.
As Professor Nutt acknowledged in the lecture that prompted his departure, there are many factors other than objective scientific facts which help determine the decisions on individual drugs and the general momentum of drug policy including political drivers and public opinion. But as we all know, the use of drugs is a highly emotive issue, riven with deeply held ideologies and beliefs; for some drug use is a moral issue – all use is bad and the nuances of relative harm are irrelevant. Even so, the Act is a legal instrument and not a vehicle simply for sending out public messages. In all the storm-tossed waters of the drugs debate, it is critical that policy is firmly lashed to the evidence mast, and if government does go against those charged with giving advice, there should be transparent reasoning behind it. Otherwise we face slipping into the American model where the Drug Enforcement Agency for example plays a key role in determining policy and there is hardly any pretence that independent advice has any role at all.
2 comments:
Linking policy and law has a very long history with some very famous and infamous players.
We are in an ever changing continuum, where different interest groups hold or lose sway.
Many currently legal behaviours and evidence were once prosecuted by the Law and treated by medicine / psychiatry, taught in schools and colleges as deviant and proscribed by media and populist political or religious players.
Planetary motion, Slavery & Homosexuality come quickly to mind.
I'd welcome any others you can name so we can put all this nonsense into some rational and historical context.
I take vicodin and oxycodone for the treatment of this disease because the doctor prescribed me after a thorough examination, seek information and findrxonline logically points out that these medicines should be tightly controlled by its high content of codeine and this makes one induces these opioids.
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