Psychedelic drugs can unlock mysteries of brain - David Nutt

You beat me to it! I love the way they banish him but he just keeps coming back!

 

but not for legalization

Or decriminialisation...you can't be for decrimming drugs when you're campaigning to make GBL illegal can you? Arn't they contradictory positions?

and increased treatment resources for drug addiction

That's another issue tho isn't it - the police and courts arn't there to treat you, they're there to punish you. Why encourage them to punish GBL users?

I'm not sure how far he'd go with respect to promoting legal, regulated psychedelic and cannabis dispensaries

Wasn't he pushing for cannabis cafes in the UK the other day?

 

Or decriminialisation...you can't be for decrimming drugs when you're campaigning to make GBL illegal can you? Arn't they contradictory positions?

No, not necessarily. Think about it from a health perspective...he's a doctor after all. Take for example the following hypothetical scenario: there's a drug being sold in corner convenience stores, completely uncontrolled, which has resulted in significant harm to health (addiction, ED visits, hospitalizations, deaths). Now, as a health care professional and chief drug advisor, do you think the drug should be controlled or not?

It's unfortunate that "controlled" is equivalent with "illegal" a the present time, and illegal entails criminal penalties, but that is simply the reality. And admittedly, GBL hasn't caused many casualties, but I'm sure it has resulted in increased ED visits and hospitalizations (withdrawals can be severe). On top of that, there's the issue of people ingesting potential contaminants or misidentified drugs if the industry is left completely unregulated.

I think Dr. Nutt's primary goal is to make the whole process of drug control more rational...or at least get the policymakers to take an honest look at the situation. By demonstrating that alcohol poses significantly more of a risk to health than psychedelics (and simultaneously doing research on the therapeutic application of psychedelics), he's implying that it doesn't make sense for these drugs to be Class A controlled substances...and perhaps someday they should be available to the general population in a regulated market. There's more nuance to it than prohibition vs. legalization.

 

No, not necessarily. Think about it from a health perspective...he's a doctor after all. Take for example the following hypothetical scenario: there's a drug being sold in corner convenience stores, completely uncontrolled, which has resulted in significant harm to health (addiction, ED visits, hospitalizations, deaths). Now, as a health care professional and chief drug advisor, do you think the drug should be controlled or not?

Was there any evidence of significant harm to health from GBL/synthetic cannbinoids tho? Or was it just a kneejerk response to that girls death and a few hysterical articles in the sun? Nutt himself puts GBL pretty low on his "scale of harm".

On top of that, there's the issue of people ingesting potential contaminants or misidentified drugs if the industry is left completely unregulated.

But surely that's still the case if all you want is decrim tho - decrim still leaves everything in the hands of the gangsters doesn't it. I thought saying he was for decrim instead of legalisation was just a political move on Nutts part because he doesn't think legalisation would be acceptable in the present climate.

 

Thats the truth!!!

 

Check out pubmed...there are numerous reports of severe withdrawal delirium and consequences of overdose from GBL. There are also a number of case reports of ED visits for synthetic cannabinoid intoxication, as well as reports of psychosis and convulsions. It's enough to put a chief drug advisor in a tough position to argue that nothing should be done. As I've pointed out before, he was never in favor of across-the-board legalization.

And it's true, decriminalization won't solve all the problems, but it's a step in the right direction. Look at the way marijuana is treated in California...with the medical marijuana industry present, it's easy to get high quality marijuana.

Ismene, I get the fact that you may not agree with the man. Can we at least acknowledge that he was never a "full-on, raging drug-warrior" or "fervent prohibitionist"? IMHO, he's is doing good work with psychedelics and is generally a voice of reason in the drug war debate.

 

I just resent that he was the driving force behind criminalising anyone who enjoyed GBL/synthetic cannabinoids etc. Pretty hard to admire a man who has done his best to lock you up.

Check out pubmed...there are numerous reports of severe withdrawal delirium and consequences of overdose from GBL.

One thing D, I don't believe that you make any drug safer by criminalising it's users. Isn't that the central myth of prohibition?

 

hes fuckin nutts yo

 

This reminds me of a skit that dave chapelle used to do called "when keeping it real goes wrong" or something. Anyway, in every walk of life you get faced with situations where you have to go against all your instinct for a greater purpose. My guess is that Nutt had to feign all sorts of nonsense to keep his job - as long as he did! Just leave it to the tabloid press to pounce on his every word and statement just to pin him to this position or that. Fuck that. I read his articles and watch his interviews in their entirety and then reflect on the over all picture.
Devils advocate is generally healthy in all walks of life though, so i think its probably a good thing that some are subjecting Nutt to overexcessive scrutiny. Just so long as you dont get too drawn into the role that you start looking for a real demon. If David Nutt is David Cameron in disguise then Hunter S Thompson is Richard Nixon, which makes us all dead anyway so it doesn't matter.

 

How far into his history are you going back tho swarm? He was apparantly working with the ACMD for seven years before he was appointed the chairman - Nutt obviously had a history that convinced fervent prohibitionist anti-drug warriors like New Labour that he was a safe pair of hands.

Has he ever said he was unhappy at leading the charge to criminalise GBL? That it was "against his instincts"?

Here's a bit of his history from around 2004 - when he was a shill for Glaxosmithkline:


UK and US researchers led by Irving Kirsch of Hull University, UK, studied all clinical trials submitted to the FDA for the licensing of the four SSRIs: fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine, nefazodone, and paroxetine (Seroxat or Paxil), for which full datasets were available. They conclude that, “compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression”.

However not everyone agrees with these new findings – in the UK, Professor David Nutt has been speaking out against the Kirsch study – using reasoned, scientific argument:

“Anti-depressants work in clinical practice,” says Nutt. “Everybody knows they work.”

I wonder why David Nutt takes this point of view?

Maybe the answer lies here – Professor Nutt has acted as a consultant to Pfizer, GSK, MSD, Novartis, Asahi, Organon, Cypress, Lilly, Janssen, Lundbeck, Wyeth. He has speaking honoraria (in addition to above) with Reckitt-Benkiser and Cephalon. Grants or clinical trial payments from MSD, GSK, Novartis, Servier, Janssen, Yamanouchi, Lundbeck, Pfizer, Wyeth, Organon.

He has shares in GSK (ex-Wellcome).

Professor Nutt also promoted Seroxat at Glaxo’s launch of Seroxat for “social anxiety disorder”.

Conflict of interest, David?
http://seroxatsecrets.wordpress.com...tients-says-latest-study-prof-nutt-disagrees/

 

I got to hand it to you Ismene, you're like a detective with this stuff - don't know how you get all these sources so fast, reckon you must have atleast a couple of guys on the payroll sifting through articles and stuff. I'm not taking the piss, i love it! Anyway, i had heard about some of that vested interest stuff with big pharma. Too be honest doesn't bother me that much if he's doing a Harry Redknapp with the funds, though obviously its not a great look. He probably did everyone a favour anyway by switching to newer antidepressants - who wants to be stuck taking amitryptallines when theres effexor and prozac out there? Reckon he just killed two birds with one stone is all.

In any case i tend to put that stuff to one side. What's important for me is the whole cultural and potentially legal dimension to his role. I think he's consistently tried to educate the public on all aspects of drugs, from the way they work in the body to how our poorly reasoned ill informed moralising has infected the drug classification classes etc... And i especially like this long term project he's got running to try and refine and mimic the effects of alcohol with a pill. That's not bad for consistency now surely?

 

I have my own team of researchers

Yeah I admit he's been admirable for the last couple of years - no complaints from me post 2010. Maybe he has just turned over a new leaf and we should be grateful.

Maybe it's time to forget about what he took from us...the bittersweet tang of GBL nectar coursing through our veins :D

 

Does being hungry for a GBL ban while developing a drug that mimics the effects of alcohol not ring any alarm bells for anyone else?

I've never taken GBL so I might be wrong but isn't it at least a bit similar in effect to alcohol?

 

It does sound like Prof Dave likes a few quid in his pocket - shilling for Glaxo, then taking the governments dollar, then setting up on his own as the self-proclaimed Che Guevera of legalis..sorry..decrimming.

Never taken alloy wheelcleaner parttime? I'm disappointed in you

 

Na, I'm not really one for solvent abuse these days. Got that out my system when I was 13.

Fuck knows if GBL is actually a solvent, if it's not it's as good as!

 

Yeah it is just like ethanol. went through a good few litres of that stuff during about a 2 yr period leading up to the ban. Burnt the shit out of my oesophagus - have been on acid blockers ever since!

Theres a time and a place for solvents though. i been getting into my ether lately.

 

Na, I'm not really one for solvent abuse these days. Got that out my system when I was 13.

Fuck knows if GBL is actually a solvent, if it's not it's as good as!

Come on PT. Water is a solvent. The "universal solvent". Have you given up the cooncil... eh... ginger? is that what you call it through there?

 

Council juice.

 

Why not Council ginger? That would be more consistent!

 

The only thing I call ginger is Spade's hair.

 

Anyway on a serious note, ethanol is pretty good solvent, so if you're still having a scoop, you're still abusing solvents.