The former government drugs adviser believes the only way to reduce the harms of alcohol is to replace it with a safer intoxicant.
Cancer incidence is set to increase by 70% globally between now and 2024, according to the World Health Organisation's World Cancer Report published earlier this month. The report states that much of the increase will be down to lifestyle factors – not just smoking, but also physical inactivity and excessive consumption of sugar, leading to obesity, and alcohol.
Changing people's behaviour is notoriously difficult and costly, but what if it were possible to greatly reduce the toxic effect of one of these lifestyle choices, alcohol? This is what David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and former chairman of the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs hopes to achieve with an alcohol substitute he is working on. The drug would be intoxicating but harmless.
I spoke to Nutt last week about the genesis of his alcohol substitute. "I have spent 20 years trying to reduce the harms of alcohol, and then about 10 years ago – while working under the UK's Foresight initiative – we thought 'we'll never stop alcohol being toxic because it's intrinsically such. It causes cancer or liver disease, for example. So why don't we replace it with a safe drug?'"
His proposed alternative to alcohol works by targeting the same receptors as the neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid, or Gaba, which has a "relaxing" effect on the central nervous system. These receptors are the target of several widely used drugs, including barbiturates, benzodiazepines (such as Valium) – and alcohol.
