Miscellaneous
"Chipping Barnet Labour Presents" is excited to welcome Professor David Nutt for the next in our series of free talks. Professor Nutt is the director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences, and a previous advisor to the government on drugs policy. He was the clinical scientific lead on the 2004/5 UK Government Foresight initiative “Brain science, addiction and drugs” that provided a 25-year vision for this area of science and public policy. He broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television including BBC science and public affairs programmes on therapeutic as well as illicit drugs, their harms and their classification. This talk focussed on the history of drug controls over the past century and how they may have done more harm than good. Professor Nutt showed multi-criteria decision analyses on the different harms of different drugs and will discuss new approaches to policy. Finally he explains how New Labour fell in to the trap of being harder on drugs than the Tories, and he discussed the need for the party to now develop a more honest and evidence based approach to drug policy. Professor Nutt is currently President of the European Brain Council. Previously he has been President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) and the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP). In addition he is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Psychiatrists and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.