Study: Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Drugs
Posted on: Friday, 23 March 2007, 08:15 CDT
LONDON -- New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.
In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.
Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts - psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise - to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD.
Nutt and his colleagues then calculated the drugs' overall rankings. In the end, the experts agreed with each other - but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.
Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.
According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.
"The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary," said Nutt, referring to the United Kingdom's practice of assigning drugs to three distinct divisions, ostensibly based on the drugs' potential for harm. "The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary," write Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet.
Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.
Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs - including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol - should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities.
"This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Iversen was not connected to the research. "It is the first real step towards an evidence-based classification of drugs." He added that based on the paper's results, alcohol and tobacco could not reasonably be excluded.
"The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol," wrote Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in an accompanying Lancet commentary. Hall was not involved with Nutt's paper.
While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved.
Nutt called for more education so that people were aware of the risks of various drugs. "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day."
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User Comments (9)
| 9. |
Posted by negro_flash on 06/27/2008, 23:07 L Smith -- I've seen the neurotoxic effects of ecstacy on people. Granted, occasional use won't turn you retarded; it's not like "taking an ice cream scooper to your brain." However, frequent use/abuse of the drug can lead to neurological problems. For instance, and this is purely anecdotal, friends are unable to feel much of any emotion and others are just zombified due to overuse of it. Unfortunately, if something makes you feel that good, it's gotta be bad for you. And, Stoner, the "isn't that like saying 'God made a mistake'" argument just makes all stoners seem ignorant. "God" put all sorts of poisons and dangerous chemicals on this earth; we shouldn't be ingesting ****nic and that's naturally-occuring. |
| 8. |
Posted by Stoner on 06/27/2008, 19:16 My text image was "love" :D As in I love weed and ****en HATE everyone who denies how incredibly awful it is for it to be illegal. Think of it this way. Most of the people who hate it are fascist/god types. This "drug" grows in DIRT, it's a PLANT. Isn't that like saying god made a mistake? How do you make nature illegal? |
| 7. |
Posted by L Smith on 06/02/2008, 20:12 Hey Dextrose! You've been listening to too much propaganda. Do your own internet research on MDMA / Ecstasy. Ecstasy does not cause irreparable brain damage. There are numerous studies in progress using MDMA for PSTD and other things. www.MAPS.org. |
| 6. |
Posted by Mike on 03/12/2008, 16:03 Nice article. People who smoke weed should be patient, the undisputable scientific evidence will eventually make it legal. The one I look forward to is when the U.K finally legalises medical marijuana. According to a list of illnesses recognised by the Canadian government as treatable through cannabis (http://www.marijuanahomedelivery.ca/list.html) , most people can find something they suffer from. Hopefully in 10 years or so my dream will come true. Weed is safe as houses, I could never imagine a bunch of chavs smoking a joint then having the energy for all the usual crimes chavs commit. God bless the leaf. |
| 5. |
Posted by devin ennis on 05/12/2007, 16:39 i think that this article was very informational. i learned alot. |
| 4. |
Posted by Jarrod on 05/02/2007, 23:57 Truth. My only problem with the article is that Metamphetamine or "Ice" is not mentioned in the top few. It physically destroys people, is horrendously addictive and is responsible for violence and crime. I would like to see why the study placed exstacy after marijurana, and i question wether they took into account the risk of getting bad exstacy, as I've seen many go to hospital after a bad e. And to attempt to regulate alcohol will just result in further crime. |
| 3. |
Posted by Dextrose on 03/23/2007, 20:13 Ecstasy? Less harmful than marijuana? *Bull****.* At first I was elated to see this article, but once I discovered how these people were ranking substances, I realised that they\'re just as ridiculously off-track as the government they\'re impuning as far as drug awareness goes. And _no_, not all drugs are dangerous, *******. They\'re only dangerous when you ****heads say that they should be illegal. For example: heroin\'s legal status makes it so expensive that junkies have to inject it intravenously, and when they buy it, they don\'t know for sure what grammage of actual heroin they\'re injecting themselves with, and they\'re often injecting themselves with unsafe fillers. But I digress. Ecstasy? More safe than most other common drugs? What the **** is who thinking? Escasy causes irreparable brain damage. Whereas marijuana, good old fragrant cane, REDUCES THE SIZE OF CANCEROUS TUMORS AND RELIEVES GLAUCOMA. What the **** is going on here? |
| 2. |
Posted by Dave Elliot on 03/23/2007, 17:33 Anyone who uses cannabis knows what a sham our drug laws are. As long as conservative hypocrites run the US, locking up users then going home for their ****tails, nothing good will happen. PLUS... with the onset of vaporizers, using weed is more enjoyable and safer than ever. i WOULD HOWEVER THROW THE BOOK AT ADULTS WHO GET WEED FOR KIDS! |
| 1. |
Posted by Hayley on 03/23/2007, 15:52 Very interesting article! I'm going to pass it on to my friends! |
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