In the latest issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, leading scientists argue that the UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s, which outlawed drugs with psychoactive substances such as marijuana, is hindering research into potentially significant medicinal uses, estimating that research in key areas such as consciousness has been set back by decades. Report authors Professor David Nutt and Professor David Nichols contend that the illegal status of psychoactive drugs makes it almost impossible…

Back in October, the British government fired its chief drug adviser, Prof. David Nutt, for saying that marijuana is less dangerous than many legal drugs and that British laws should be changed to reflect this reality. Many other members of the United Kingdom’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned in protest Then this week, Les Iversen, a former pharmacology professor at the University of Oxford, was announced as Nutt’s interim replacement as the council’s chairman. And guess what? He’s…

David Nutt, removed as chair of the British government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for daring to speak the unwanted truth that marijuana is safer than alcohol, is speaking out again, this time in the pages of The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals. Unfortunately, you can read only the first few lines of Nutt’s column unless you pay for full access (correction: you have to register but don't have to pay -- thanks to Just Legalize It for pointing this out), but he makes a…

Two members of Britain’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs have resigned in protest after the group’s chairman, Professor David Nutt, was fired last week for criticizing the UK government’s decision to strengthen penalties for marijuana offenses. Chemist Les King and pharmacist Marion Walker said that the government wrongly dismissed Nutt and violated his freedom of expression. Several other advisers on the once 31-member group are rumored to be “planning collective action” against British…