In this IPR Public Lecture, Professor David Nutt - Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Head of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, as well as former Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs - explores the ways in which evidence is being misused to stop rational regulations for alcohol and tobacco and, simultaneously, to impose unnecessary and potentially harmful sanctions on other drugs. He also addresses new ways we can approach this problem by putting science in charge. The control or regulation of alcohol and other harmful drugs, he argues, is a matter or major public health interest since drugs – legal and illegal – are the leading cause of preventable death.

This IPR Public Lecture took place on 25 February 2016