A quick link to a fascinating podcast courtesy of the Guardian Science Weekly: An hour-long interview with David Nutt, psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, sacked in 2009 from the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs for, well, being rational and not towing the party line, basically.
I think he's enormously clear and it's nice to hear scientific information about drugs that isn't infused with moral or political rhetoric. I've always liked this simple yet controversial graph from his Lancet paper on the relative harm of drugs:
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My favourite point in the whole interview? Right at the beginning, where he explains that all drugs are derived from plants, which developed compounds to stop insects from eating them.
All animals, including us, have corresponding receptors for these compounds in their nervous system; in insects it kills them, in us, it produces weird and sometimes pleasurable effects.
If that isn't a prime example of the sublime absurdity and meaninglessness of our existence, then I don't know what is.
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