Published 13 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b612
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b612

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Home secretary accused of bullying drugs adviser over comments about ecstasy

Zosia Kmietowicz

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Champions of evidence based medicine have defended the UK government’s drugs adviser who was criticised this week by the home secretary for saying that the risk associated with taking the recreational drug ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse.

Ben Goldacre, a doctor and author of Bad Science, said that it was "completely ridiculous" that David Nutt was forced to apologise for his comments, which he made in an article in the Journal of Psychopharmacology and were widely reported in the British press at the weekend (2009;23:3-5, doi:10.1177/0269881108099672).

In the article, which was written before Professor Nutt took his post as chairman of the Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he argued that "equine addiction syndrome" results in 100 deaths a year compared with 30 for ecstasy use.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, criticised Professor Nutt and demanded an apology, saying that his comments went beyond . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

UK government rejects advice from drugs adviser to downgrade ecstasy
Zosia Kmietowicz
BMJ 2009 338: b592. [Extract] [Full Text]

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