We at the Foundation Degree in Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Counselling teamed up with the Criminology Department and invited Professor Nutt to come to and speak in Leicester.

He will be coming to speak at a Public Lecture on Wednesday 20th of November, at Leicester University. The title of his talk is:

‘Putting Science at the Heart of Drug Policy’

Watch this space for time, venue and booking details.

In case you didn’t know here is a bit of background on Professor Nutt:

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He holds visiting professorships in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. He is a past president of the British Association of Psychopharmacology and of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is currently the president of the British Neuroscience Association and vice-president of the European Brain Council. He is currently chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. (This CV carries on, you get the idea, he is very eminent!)

He was Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). One paper he co-authored, was published in the Lancet (2007 Volume 369, pp 1047-53) under the title “Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse”. This was part of a continuing critique of the current drug classification system according to the Misuse of Drugs Act. Proposing a more rational way of classifying drugs according to their potential harm and pointing out the inconsistencies in the current system.

This made him a bit unpopular and in 2009 got him sacked by the Home Secretary as Chair of the ACMD. He went on to found the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. In 2012 wrote a book on the topic of drug policy: “Drugs without the Hot Air”