Depressingly Familiar

A friend emails me, mighty angry, as follows:-

The Telegraph reports that the Government's drugs adviser has been fired.

Why?

Not for being wrong.
Not for betraying scientific principles and methodology.
Not for fiddling his expenses and flipping his residence.
Not for being cynical shifty and self-serving in an attempt to stave off a tabloid assault.

Why then?

For telling the Government what it does not want to hear; arguments to which successive governments have stopped their ears while crying out "La-La-La" ever since James Callaghan binned the Wootton report without, apparently, troubling to read it.

The War on Drugs as as currently waged has about as much hope of a successful outcome as the one in Afghanistan. It has almost certainly cost more and killed more people too.

Here is The Guardian's View.