David Nutt, welcome to the show.

It's a pleasure to be here, thank you.

As regular viewers of this show will know, I am just obsessed with the topic of drugs

and I'm really excited to speak with you today as someone who I've been trying to get on the show for a long time to give a sort of alternate view of drugs than was given by the previous guests who I had on my show talking about drugs,

a certain Mr. Hitchins from the mail on Sunday.

So hopefully this will offer something of an antidote to that particular episode.

But for those who aren't aware of you, Professor Nut,

you were the government's chief drug advisor.

You were the UK government's chief drug advisor,

but you got fired. Can you tell us why?

Well the short answer is for pointing out the government policy wasn't evidence

based. And That was not a insight the government were prepared to take on board,

particularly not with the 2010 election on its way. Sure, now some of the headlines said Professor Nutt fired for saying that taking

ecstasy is safer than riding a horse. Is that true?

It certainly is, yes.

Particularly if you, when you're riding your horse,

you're jumping over things.

Eventing is considerably more dangerous than

than taking ecstasy if you look at the harms per hour engaged in the activity.

It definitely would be banning eventing and allowing legal

consumption of ecstasy if you had a rational policy.

What kind of irrationality irrational policy are you talking about here when you say that the government

...