Professor David Nutt of the University of Bristol was Chair of the ACMD until being relieved of his post on 30 October 2009 after criticising politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.
Earlier in the year, in February 2009, the government was accused by Professor Nutt of making a political decisions with regard to drug classification, for example in rejecting the scientific advice to downgrade ecstasy from a class A drug. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report on ecstasy, based on a 12-month study of 4,000 academic papers, concluded that it is nowhere near as dangerous as other class A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine, and should be downgraded to class B. The advice was not followed.[4] Jacqui Smith, then Home Secretary, was also widely criticised by the scientific community for bullying Professor David Nutt into apologising for his comments that, in the course of a normal year, more people died from falling off horses than died from taking ecstasy