David Nutt is no stranger to controversy. Sacked as chairperson of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after his academic paper Equasy showed that horse-riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy, he has remained a virulent opponent of the current laws on drugs.

Nutt believes that ministers confuse their personal opinions on the morality of drug-taking with the facts surrounding its relative risks: that they “veil decision making” with the word “harmful” when they mean “unacceptable”. To him, encouraging people who want to get intoxicated to drink alcohol is the true moral wrong. As he puts it, “alcohol will always be more toxic than cannabis, so why shouldn’t people have the choice?” He argues that the belief that alcohol is safer than drugs stems from the fact that the drinks industry spend £80 million a year telling the public that drinking is a “lifestyle choice” and a way to relax. “Everyone is scared of their kids dying of drugs but what they need to realise is that the drug that’s killing most of their kids is alcohol.”

There were no holds barred for Nutt in his attack on the “right-wing Tory press” for encouraging anti-drug hysteria. He accused them of “loving to stir things up”, and pointed out the disproportionate coverage of drugs-related deaths compared to ones linked to alcohol. Speaking to Varsity, he said: “Some journalists, some editors take pride in getting drugs banned. I think they see it as one of the few tangible measures of their success these days.”

Nutt is working on an alcohol substitute drug, likened by some to the e-cigarette, which he says will “revolutionise drinking”, and will come complete with an antidote so people can “enjoy the social lubrication of alcohol” but drive home afterwards. He thinks it will be able to “tweak out some of the worst effects of alcohol like the violence and the addiction”.

In terms of reducing alcohol’s cost to society (which currently stands at £1000 per taxpayer per year), Nutt would like to see a ban on alcohol advertising and a system which prices alcohol per unit so that “binge drinking becomes uneconomical”. When pressed about whether this simply punishes poor alcoholics, Nutt sternly replied that “taxing strong ciders keeps alcoholics alive”.

The economic cost of caring for alcoholics is huge, but so too is the social cost of criminalising of marijuana. Black and Asian people, particularly young men, are far more likely to be convicted for cannabis possession. “The criminal record will do far more harm than the cannabis would have done.”

Nutt is adamant that whilst “all drugs can be harmful”, cannabis is much less so than alcohol. He dismisses the links between cannabis and schizophrenia, and points out the cannabis is linked to “maybe 10” deaths a year compared to alcohol’s 8,000 and tobacco’s 80,000. 3 young people die of acute alcohol poisoning every week in the UK alone. “Alcohol is our favourite drug and that’s why it’s the most dangerous.” It seems he has a long way to go to convince the government of anything of the sort.