Sack your experts

The list of things I don't know is endless. I don't know how to fix my car. I don't know how to bake soda bread. I don't know how to fill a tooth.

If I need any of those things doing, I ask someone who knows how to do those things to help me. I ask someone who has some expertise. And then I listen to them and I take their advice.

It seems obvious to me that if you appoint a panel of experts to help you with something, it's probably useful to listen to them. It's less helpful to sack them when you say something they don't like. So I am rather baffled that Home Secretary Alan Johnson has sacked Professor David Nutt, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Professor Nutt's crime was to suggest that the classification of illegal drugs should be based on the harm that they do. He also highlighted how this is very far from being the case in the UK, where alcohol and tobacco are freely available, but ecstasy and cannabis are Class A and Class B drugs, respectively.

Whatever your opinion on illegal drugs, it seems to me to set an alarming precedent when the government sacks a scientific adviser for... talking sensibly about evidence-based science.

The setting of drugs policy has long been an emotive area, but I do find it incredible that the Home Secretary seems more or less happy to come out and say that when it comes to classifying drugs, public opinion is more important than scientific evidence.