Evidence Based

The above video is to introduce you to Joss Stone who is creating quite a furor in the UK by saying the same thing this book says:

Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

Joss says marijuana is safer than alcohol.

Singer Joss Stone has been condemned for glamourising drugs after an astonishing diatribe in which she claimed cannabis is less harmful than alcohol.

She also trivialised the dangers of harder 'more horrible' drugs, which she described as 'fun'.

The 22-year-old has enraged anti-drug campaigners after it was suggested she made the comments in a desperate attempt to drum up publicity for her new album.

Well it is working if that was her purpose. She got a lot of publicity for her remarks.

Some people are not happy though.

Her comments, which come just weeks after she released the album, brought a furious response from David Raynes, head of the National Drugs Prevention Alliance.

He said: 'She should consider the effects that her comments have on other people, especially young fans who look up to her.

'People like Joss Stone should keep their mouths shut about things like this.

It is terribly damaging and she clearly hasn't considered the wider effects of the drug, although she clearly didn't get to become a pop star because she is a student of social sciences.

'We already have a drug culture in the UK and she is simply adding to that.'

Ah. A Culture War. Interesting that they have them in the UK too. And of course science is enlisted in the fight. But science seems to be defecting.

Her comments also come weeks after Professor David Nutt was sacked as the government's drugs advisor for controversially claiming that cannabis, Ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes.

It appears that the Nutt sacking was not popular with other UK scientists.

The Government is facing mass resignations from the official advisory body on drugs after the sacking of its chairman, The Times has learnt.

Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs quit yesterday in protest at Alan Johnson’s dismissal of David Nutt in a row over the relative harm caused by drugs and alcohol.

Les King, an expert chemist, was the first to resign. He said that the Home Secretary had denied Professor Nutt his right to free speech and called for the council to become truly independent of politicians. He was swiftly followed by Marion Walker, a pharmacist and clinical director with the substance misuse service at the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

The affair has led scientists to question the Government’s wider commitment to the independence of external scientific advisers, and raised fears that experts will become reluctant to sit on advisory panels.

Scientists on the council are preparing a letter to ministers seeking assurances that they will remain free to set their agenda and to speak freely about their research and findings. It is possible the 28 remaining members will quit if their concerns are not addressed before a council meeting next week.

One of the country’s leading experts on drug dependence said that, without such assurances, it would be difficult for any scientist to succeed Professor Nutt as council chairman while retaining the respect of their peers.

What got the Brit drug warriors so upset was this statement by Professor Nutt.

Professor Nutt was sacked after criticisms he had made of the Government’s drugs policy were published in a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King’s College London. The comments were made in a lecture he delivered in July, in which he said that Ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes. He also criticised the decision to upgrade cannabis to class B.

Mr Johnson insisted that he was right to force Professor Nutt to stand down months after he took over as council chairman. “You cannot have a chief adviser at the same time stepping into the public field and campaigning against government decisions,” he said.

Well of course you can't. If the government is lying and the scientists are basing their views on actual facts it makes the government look bad. We can't have that now can we? People might lose faith in their betters. Making them no better (and probably worse) than the rest of us.

The clashes of science with political science are nothing new. It has been going on at least since the dust up between Galileo and the Catholic Church. In the end it always makes the political scientist look stupid and reduces their credibility.

If the Earth rotates around the sun and other planets besides Earth have moons you can only accept that fact. If marijuana is safer than alcohol there is nothing you can do but accept the fact. Political science always loses to facts. In the long run.

In theory we are smarter than the the Catholic Church was in the 1600s. In fact we have not come so far baby.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values