2009/02/13 by Z. Kmietowicz · 1 citation
Medicine · Psychology · #Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes #Opioid Use Disorder Treatment #Gambling Behavior and Treatments #Ecstasy #Ridiculous #Recreational Drug #Government (linguistics) #Law #Psychiatry #Political science #Criminology #Medicine #Psychology #Art #Drug #Philosophy #Literature
paper · doi:10.1136/bmj.b612
openalex publication_date 2009/02/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Champions of evidence based medicine have defended the UK government’s drugs adviser who was criticised this week by the home secretary for saying that the risk associated with taking the recreational drug ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse. Ben Goldacre, a doctor and author of Bad Science , said that it was “completely ridiculous” that David Nutt was forced to apologise for his comments, which he made in an article in the Journal of Psychopharmacology and were widely reported in the British press at the weekend (2009;23:3-5, doi:10.1177/0269881108099672). In the article, which was written before Professor Nutt took his post as chairman of the Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he argued that “equine addiction syndrome” results in 100 deaths a year compared with 30 …