This is from The Telegraph, not The Onion:

Chief drugs adviser sacked by Home Secretary

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has sacked his chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, after he criticised the reclassification of cannabis and said alcohol and cigarettes were more dangerous than ecstasy.

Read it for yourself if you don't believe it.

It's less funny further on:

This week he called for the current drug classification system to be replaced with a "drug harm ranking" including legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco.

...

Prof Nutt said: ... Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, "makes completely irrational statements about cannabis being 'lethal', which it is not".
...

He said:"I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy," he said.

"I think most scientists will see this as a further example of the Luddite attitude of this government, and possible future governments, towards science."