Prof David Nutt was appointed chairman of the UK Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), in 2008. In 2009 he published an editorial in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, comparing the harms caused by horse-riding with the effect of taking ecstasy. As a result of this and other comments on the harms caused by legal and illegal drugs, he was sacked by the then Home Secretary. In ""Drugs - without the hot air"", Prof Nutt puts the case for an evidence-based scientific approach to drugs. In straightforward languages for the lay person, he explains what drugs are, how