Pubdate: Sat, 16 Jun 2012
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Peter McKnight
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

BEWARE THE DRUG POLICY HERETICS

B. C. Health Officer Perry Kendall Has Learned the Hard Way That 
Long- Held Dogma Must Not Be Challenged

 From our supposedly sophisticated 21st-century perspective, it's 
easy to look condescendingly on our past, when people were persecuted 
for nothing more than denying or doubting the received "truths" of 
their religion.

Yet for all the progress we've made in accepting unorthodox religious 
beliefs, the persecution of heretics remains a live issue. And worse, 
it's now taking place in a field ostensibly governed not by faith but 
by reason.

As evidence of this, look no further than the outrage that greeted 
Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall's comments this week, when he 
dared to question the received "truths" about the illicit drug ecstasy (MDMA).

Noting that researchers are assessing the drug's efficacy in treating 
post-traumatic stress disorder, Kendall opined that it might be safe 
for adults to use MDMA under certain circumstances. And he also mused 
about what a regime involving regulation rather than criminalization 
of the drug might look like.

He was therefore guilty of two heresies: First, he expressed doubt 
about the received "truth" that ecstasy is necessarily dangerous, and 
second, he expressed doubt about the received "truth" that 
criminalization of such drugs is the only way to diminish their dangers.

The reaction to such heresy was predictable: Politicians at all 
levels of government fell over each other in their attempts to 
distance themselves from Kendall's comments, and Kendall was forced 
to appear before the media to offer a "clarification" - not a 
recantation exactly, though he did say he wasn't advocating for the 
legalization of ecstasy, which as a street drug can be "extremely dangerous."

So Kendall's latest comments, whether or not they amount to a 
recantation, do what every good recantation does: affirm official 
dogma. In this case, official dogma has it that "dangerous" drugs 
must necessarily be criminalized, and that all drugs that have been 
criminalized, and only drugs that have been criminalized, are 
necessarily dangerous. (Notice how this latter point effectively 
sends the message that the government doesn't make mistakes.)

That's the dogma. The evidence, of course, is another matter 
entirely. In an effort to separate the two, researchers led by 
renowned British neurop-sychopharmacologist David Nutt assessed the 
harms caused by a variety of substances and published their results 
in The Lancet in 2007.

Sure enough, the researchers found that certain legal substances, 
such as alcohol, are far more dangerous than certain illegal ones, 
such as ecstasy, which, incidentally, was considered among the least 
dangerous of the assessed substances.

Now in a culture that respects reason and evidence, such findings 
would have prompted lawmakers to reassess the current legislative 
regime. But in a culture guided by official dogma, any evidence that 
conflicts with the dogma amounts to heresy and must be expunged, 
along with the heretics who highlight such evidence.

So it was with David Nutt. After delivering a lecture in which he 
presented the evidence from The Lancet study, and after reaffirming 
his belief that law-makers ought to classify drugs based on the 
actual harm they cause, Nutt was unceremoniously dismissed from his 
position as chairman of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

It is bizarre indeed that someone can be fired for advocating for 
evidence-based drug policy. But Nutt - who had previously been forced 
to publicly apologize for daring, in an academic journal, to compare 
the relative risks of taking ecstasy with riding a horse - took it 
all in stride and formed his own group, the Independent Scientific 
Committee on Drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom