YEARS ago, when I was a teacher at a secondary school in Bolton, Lancashire, I marvelled at the way pupils were entranced by two annual visitors from the local education authority.

These were known as “the drugs man” and “the VD man”. Each year, just before the summer holidays, they would descend on the fourth-formers and deliver a cautionary homily on the evils of drugs and unprotected sex. It became clear that sex and drugs loom so large in the minds of teenagers that they are delighted to hear even about their darkest side.

My mind went back to those days when I heard the news that Professor David Nutt, the so-called “drugs czar”, had been sacked for publicly criticising government policy.

Prof Nutt has described Gordon Brown and his cabinet as “irrational Luddites”. As chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Prof Nutt claimed that illegal drugs cannabis and ecstasy are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

For so saying, he was asked to resign by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who said he had lost confidence in the expert’s political impartiality.

Well, I am cynical enough to understand that politicians do as they damn well like and it is their peculiar prerogative to ignore the judgements even of those they themselves appointed to offer professional advice.

The fact is that our society’s attitude towards drugs is confused and hypocritical.

Every government comes in with a promise to get tough in “the war on drugs”, but the result is that illegal drug-taking increases all the time.

Actually, there is no such war on drugs. If we are asked to believe that there really is serious effort on the part of our law-makers and law-enforcers to reduce the amount of illegal drug-taking, then why is it easy to buy almost any substance you fancy in at least a score of pubs in every town in the land?

Millions go out clubbing and drugging every weekend. I have read reports that middle- class trendies offer drugs with the Chardonnay at their dinner parties. The main reason that our town centres are no-go areas on Friday and Saturday nights is on account of roaming bands of stoned oiks out of control.

But the most sickening aspect of the whole business is that those who rule us reward the most prominent drug-takers – high-profile pop stars – with knighthoods. What a way to fight a “war on drugs”.

And the same newspapers which carry terrifying reports and warnings about “lovely bubbly” teenagers dying of overdoses also feature articles and interviews with celebrities who cheerfully admit that they regularly take illegal drugs.

I don’t have a personal interest in this for I have never taken anything apart from the fags and the booze – and I gave up the fags on my 27th birthday, the year of the first moon landing for those of you with an interest in ancient history. And I gave up spirits when I was 50, so it’s vino and the odd pint or three for me these days.

I can’t speak for the VD man, but I remember the drugs man used to ask the kids: “Do you want me to tell you about all drugs, or just the most dangerous?” Every year they replied: “The most dangerous.” So he would talk about alcohol and tobacco. David Nutt, you are in good company.