Chris

Again, you're belittling a very important constituency of opinion here. Whether you denounce them as Puritans or Middle Englanders feeding off hysterical tabloids, they are a sizeable chunk of the population and they are entitled to decide what is and is not allowed to happen in their communities.

We simply do not live as subjects to the kind of all-knowing State that decrees what we are and are not allowed to do based on the opinions of experts, no matter how highly qualified. That is not how the UK operates. The democratic principle that ultimately, it's the people who decide what's acceptable is woven right through our society and the systems that underpin it. It's even evident in the courtroom: a jury has the power to acquit a man no matter how strong the evidence against him. It is not possible to launch a criminal appeal on the basis that 'the jury was wrong'. The jury cannot be wrong. The British people acting democratically cannot be wrong. That's how it works.

Nutt is a member of our democratic society and was IMO entitled to his say before he was sacked. The Government has behaved disgracefully in sacking him and in being scared to admit that there may be more to drugs policy than carefully-conducted scientific studies. But ultimately, the Government rightly has the power to set policy in that way. We will judge them on this and all the other issues at the ballot box.