NEWS: New Study puts Alcohol/Tobacco ahead of Marijuana/Ecstacy in Dangerousness

not that you didn't already know that

Article:
Alcohol, tobacco make top 10 list of risky drugs
British study rated the substances more dangerous than marijuana, Ecstasy


Research recently published in the medical journal The Lancet rates the most dangerous drugs (starting with the worst) as follows:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbiturates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines
8. Amphetamine
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl nitrates
20. Khat

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.

'Current drug system is ill thought-out'
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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interesting.

theres no WAY pot is more dangerous than ecstasy and steroids

They should have released this list on Letterman.

Pot actually made the list?

Also buprenorphine, funnily enough, is used to treat heroin addictions. O irony, you do know how to cook up a hit.

I tell my pot head friends that this is what makes smoking pot so bad for them but they just laugh and run off to buy chips and candy.

*rimshot*

That was my exact thought upon seeing the list.

I actually went and got myself an account on "The Lancet" website (where the actual study was published) yesterday to check this out... And that's exactly it. Also influenced intravenous drugs getting such a high rating... HIV sucks.

Apparently "social harms" were part of the calculation as well. ie lack of motivation can screw up your life pretty bad.

They were also looking at the drugs themselves, rather than all the scary contaminants/cuts that can really fuck you up.

It's more complex than that, though. Hopefully this link to the ranking itself actually works.

Also interesting:

So I'd say the summary given in the OP is off base.

I'm surprised that amphetamine ranks above tobacco.

Its also kind of interesting that methylphenidate (ie Ritalin) is on the list because this drug gets very widely prescribed to children for treatment of attention deficit disorder. If someone were to suggest giving anabolic steroids or ecstasy to children, there would be public outcry and a lynching mob would soon appear on the scene. Its funny to think that this study rates methylphenidate as being more dangerous than ecstasy or anabolic steroids.

There are lots of studies showing the cannabis can be harmful to mental health. The causal link isn't so clear yet.

Pot fucks up some people who are vulnerable
Pot fucks up some people who are make themselves vulnerable by how much they smoke.
Pot might fuck up some people who aren't vulnerable, even if they only smoke moderately.

Hm. No comments about the effect of pot on reflex time, and therefore driver safety?

I believe that would fall under social harm.

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