SAVILE SCIENCE: DAVID NUTT – HIDDEN DAMAGE – HOW IRRATIONAL DRUG LAWS HAVE PERPETRATED THE WORSE CENSORSHIP OF RESEARCH EVER. CHAIRED BY SAVILIAN CLIFF COLLIS.

UK and international drug control legislations e.g. the UN Conventions on narcotics have been in place for over half a century with the aim to reduce use and harms. There is little evidence they achieved either and indeed may have increased both. One much less considered aspect of these is their extremely deleterious impact on research, which for psychedelics in the 1960s was extremely promising but subsequently almost disappeared. My talk will highlight the magnitude of this effect and the hugely negative consequences for research both clinical and neuroscientific. I will show how we and other researchers have been fighting back and revealing remarkable efficacy for these still-banned substances. Finally,

I will call for them to have their illegal status urgently re-considered.

David Nutt is a psychiatrist and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in Imperial College London. He has been president of the European Brain Council, the BAP, BNA, and ECNP.  He is currently Founding Chair of the charity DrugScience.org.uk. David has published 35 books and over 1000 papers, including in Nature, Cell Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. These define his many landmark contributions to psychopharmacology including GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction and the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelics