David Nutt, D.M.
Neuropsychopharmacologist; Head, Imperial College London Drug Science; Former UK Drug Advisor
Britain's most prominent drug policy scientist — fired from the UK government's drug advisory council for stating that alcohol is more dangerous than psilocybin, and subsequently a driving force behind the Imperial College London psychedelic research program.
Biography
David Nutt is a neuropsychopharmacologist and Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London who became the most prominent — and politically controversial — drug scientist in Britain after being dismissed in 2009 as Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. His dismissal came after he published evidence that alcohol is more harmful than psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, and LSD — a statement that was accurate according to comparative harm analysis but politically unacceptable to the Home Secretary at the time.
Following his dismissal, Nutt founded Drug Science, an independent scientific organization providing evidence-based drug policy analysis independent of political constraints. He continued at Imperial College London, where he has been a foundational figure in the development of the Centre for Psychedelic Research — the institution that produced Robin Carhart-Harris, Christopher Timmermann, Rosalind Watts, and many of the most important psychedelic neuroimaging studies of the past decade.
Nutt's comparative harm analysis published in The Lancet (2010) — using multi-criteria decision analysis to rank drugs by harm to self and others — remains one of the most cited evidence-based challenges to drug scheduling policy. The paper demonstrated that alcohol and tobacco are among the most harmful substances by these metrics, while psilocybin mushrooms rank among the least harmful.
His books include 'Drugs Without the Hot Air' (2012), widely considered the most balanced lay-accessible account of how different drugs affect the brain and what the evidence says about their relative harms. He has been a consistent voice for evidence-based drug policy reform across Europe and internationally.
Organizations
Why They Matter to the LearnShrooms Community
Nutt provided the political and institutional leadership that made the Imperial College London psychedelic research program possible. His firing by the UK government became an international story about the gap between drug policy and drug science, and his subsequent work — building both the Imperial research program and Drug Science — has produced some of the most consequential psychedelic neuroimaging research in the world.
