Sacked Nutt takes swipe at papers 'cooking up' sensational drugs headlines

Professor David Nutt, the government's former chief drugs advisor is becoming a thorn in the government’s side (though the smutty headline potential has clearly excited editors)

However, writing in the Guardian today, Nutt also takes a swipe at the media and its fascination with the scientifically insignificant number of drugs related deaths.

Nutt follows a line of argument previously championed by Nick Davies of Flat Earth News fame who, back in 2000, pointed out that a media obsession with the evils of drugs - encouraged by an over-zealous government - at best obfuscates the truth, at worst perpetuates dangerous myths, about drugs. (Davies argued that heroin, for example caused few if any fatalities in its purest form, but rather deaths were directly linked to side-effects of the criminal and underground nature of the drug which owed much to media demonisation and government pressure). History repeating itself?

The following data illustrates a remarkable finding. It derives from the PhD of a Scottish graduate, Alasdair JM Forsyth, who looked at every single newspaper report of drug deaths in Scotland from 1990 to 1999 and compared them with the coroners' data.

Over the decade, there were 2,255 drug deaths, of which the Scottish newspapers reported 546. For aspirin, only one in every 265 deaths were reported. For morphine, one in 72 deaths were reported, indicating that editors were not interested in this opiate. They were more interested in heroin, where one in five deaths were reported, and methadone, where one in 16 deaths were reported.

They were also more interested in stimulants. With amphetamines, deaths are relatively rare at 36, but one in three were reported; for cocaine it was one in eight. Amazingly, almost every single ecstasy death – that is, 26 out of 28 of those where ecstasy was named as a possible contributory factor – was reported. So there's a peculiar imbalance in terms of reporting that is clearly inappropriate in relation to the relative harms of ecstasy compared with other drugs. The reporting gives the impression that ecstasy is a much more dangerous drug than it is.