I've been following the whole Alan Johnson/Professor Nutt story this weekend, and I'm of the opinion that it is an illustration of how politics has dumbed down.  Policy is, it seems to me, more driven by tabloid opinion and blatent vote chasing than being founded in reality. 

By trying to limit every single debate to good/bad, black/white, yes/no questions, there becomes no ground to be moderate or pragmatic, nor in fact is there space for an intelligent and reasoned debate.  In my view, its this move into binary politics that gives extreme parties like the BNP credibility - since they just appear to some to be on the particular side of the question that they agree with - and hence of no difference to the mainstream parties who also come down on that side of the fence.

Professor Nutt described the drug Ecstasy as being less dangerous than horse riding, and Alan Johnson, in a typical knee jerk fashion, riposted with some ridiculous nonsense about not many people in his constituency owning horses.  I'm sorry, but that still doesn't make the fact that more people are killed each year in horse riding accidents than by Ecstacy go away, no matter how much you would like it to. 

Whilst all deaths are regrettable, simply because someone is killed by drugs doesn't make their death any worse than someone who has been killed by another means.  The point Prof. Nutt was making was about comparable & relative risks, and that is the point of his argument.

When questioned about this on Radio 5 at the weekend, the reporter asked Professor Nutt how Leah Betts' parents would feel about this comparison, and quite rightly, Professor Nutt retorted (and I'm paraphrasing here) "how do you think the parents of those horse riders feel?'

What is the point - I've often been heard shouting at the radio (its my age ) - of appointing a bunch of highly intelligent academics to produce a report into drugs of abuse (or in fact early years education policy, social services, weapons of mass destruction, asylum seekers etc) - and then to rubbish the findings simply because it doesn't agree with your personal tabloid view of the world? 

As Robert Keith Leavitt (US Advertising Guru) once remarked "People don't ask for facts in making up their minds.  They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts."