The sacking of Professor Nutt by Alan Johnson, the British Home Secretary, has to do with the differences between belief and evidence. For some, such as the Home Secretary, belief is more important than evidence. The Home Secretary believes that drugs are the cause many of the problems found in our society, whereas the evidence, gathered by hundreds of scientists over many years of research, shows quite the opposite.

The acceptance of belief over evidence has been occurring for thousands of years. The Catholic Church, persecuted Nicholas Copernicus back in 14th century, because he pointed out that the earth was not the centre of the universe, just as Alan Johnson has persecuted Professor Nutt. The same happened to Galileo in the 15th century, when he found that Jupiter had moons. This condemnation based on belief, is not limited to politicians, the ideas of plate tectonics and warm blooded dinosaurs that later became birds were both condemned by those in power in the scientific community, when they were proposed, because the concepts did not fit in the beliefs of the scientists who controlled research.

What has happened here, is the same that had occurred in the 1800's the poor were considered to be lazy, and laws were passed to force them to work, when in reality, the poor were just that, because of economic factors that they could not control. The poor were punished because those in power believed they were at fault for their own situation. It took others to find the evidence that the poor were poor, because of other factors, and it took many years before those in power were willing to admit that the poor were not lazy.

In this case, the evidence shows that alcohol and tobacco causes more heath problems than cannabis. It has also been shown that smoking cannabis creates only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness. Many of the individuals who do smoke cannabis that also have psychotic illnesses have been shown to be better off smoking the drug, than they would be if they hadn't been smoking it. Many doctors feel these individuals have been successfully self medicating themselves.

But this is not what the Health Secretary believes to be true. Therefore, he must punish Professor Nutt, much as the Catholic Church punished those who also found evidence that contradicted their beliefs, and for the same reason.

As long as evidence is not allowed to be given it's proper due, scientists will not be allowed to have opinions.