The NSW Users & AIDS Association

In October this year, Professor David Nutt, chairman of Britain’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), was fired by the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, for claiming ecstacy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol. It was not the first time Nutt had irritated the government by exposing its spin to the glare of science: earlier in the year he caused a furore after pointing out more people died from riding horses in the United Kingdom each year than from taking ecstacy. And in a lecture he delivered at Kings College in London he quoted from a New Scientist editorial that asked the reader to imagine being seated at a table with two bowls, one containing peanuts, the other ecstasy. Which is safer to offer to a stranger? “You should give them ecstasy, of course”, New Scientist wrote. “A much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA.”

Try to start on a public treatment program in New South Wales. It is well nigh impossible. There is a serious block to accessing methadone and buprenorphine treatment programs in this state. This has largely come about through counter-productive bureaucratic decisions made by the NSW government which have had some severe unintended consequences.

Re: Santa Comes to Town

Hi. Thanks for all the cards and notes this year. I still take the time to flick through them and this year the website has made it easier. So thanks. I think it’s time Santa hit “reply all” and cleared the air about a few things that come up year after year in your letters.