The BBC version naturally makes more sense than the Daily Mail version.
All we need to know about the Daily Fail's reporting is the biased and incorrect headline "Sacked: Drug tsar who claimed Ecstasy, cannabis and LSD are less harmful than alcohol". He was not a "tsar"; that is the title of the person the government employs to carry on the "War on Drugs". He did not "claim" anything. He showed it, using science. And alcohol is much more harmful than those other things.
That is what makes this so awful. The useless Jacqui Smith deliberately ignored proper scientific evidence because it didn't fit in with the stupid view that alcohol and tobacco are safe. And now we have Alan Johnson, who sacks scientists because their results don't fit in with what he tells us must be true.
We are expected to believe people who have been fiddling their expenses, telling us lies to get us into wars, and other things they have kept hidden, and not believe scientists. Well I am not falling for that rubbish, Johnson, as I am not stupid. No doubt, I will be shipped off to the re-education centre soon enough...
jenray
Pro 
Subterfuge and dishonesty seems to have become endemic in the political culture......Oh Dear! Where is it all going to end....?
I heard the interview with him tonight and he spoke out very clearly defending the scientific studies that have been done on various drugs, but, as he pointed out, the government aren't interested in hearing what the scientists have to say, it wants to make a point and his views undermine it...I think Alan Johnson has behaved very badly indeed in this situation...very surprised, but he's probably been leaned on as well to get rid of him...still, he should have stood by his conclusions and those of other scientific studies all of which came to the same conclusion...