Alcohol causes more harm than herion and cocaine.

[rafterman]

Marijuana right at the bottom of the list. No surprise.

Alcohol more harmful than heroin, cocaine, study finds

01/11/2010 8:07:05 AM

CTV.ca News Staff
Alcohol is ranked "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs, more dangerous even than crack cocaine and heroin, according to a new study released Monday.


The study, published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, rated the drugs using a scale that weighed the physical, psychological and social problems they caused and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall.

The study gave alcohol a score of 72 out of 100 in evaluating its harm to individual users and the rest of society.

That was nearly three times the score given to cocaine and tobacco.

Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and the physical harm it causes users, but also considered environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

The study found that heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine were the most harmful drugs to individuals, while alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others.

But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine.

Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower in the study, paid for by Britain's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet.

Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.

"Just think about what happens at every football game," said Wim van den Brink, a professor of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Amsterdam who co-authored a commentary on the study, also published in the Lancet.

When drunk in excess, alcohol damages nearly all organ systems. It is also connected to higher death rates and is involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin.

The study's authors said their findings suggest that illicit drug laws have "little relation to the evidence of harm."

"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science," said van den Brink. "Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit."

They recommended that governments target the harmful effects of alcohol as "a valid and necessary public health strategy."

But experts said it would be impractical and incorrect to outlaw alcohol and suggested .

"We cannot return to the days of prohibition," said Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study's authors. "Alcohol is too embedded in our culture and it won't go away."

Instead, they recommended governments target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who drink only occasionally.

They also said more education programs on the dangers of alcohol are needed and recommended higher prices so it isn't as widely available.

 

[Miss Blunted]

I agree...a family member works in a hospital and she said when she was in the detox/rehab unit...the alcoholics were far worse than the heroin addicts to get through detox. I so believe that....I've seen what severe, severe alcoholism can do.

 

[oldpink]

old news the governments would rather ignore, coffee has a higher rating than cannabis

 

[supermanlives]

not surprising

 

[BrainSellz]

one more article for the record:
Alcohol more harmful than heroin, crack
November 2, 2010 - 4:59AM

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug in Britain, beating heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study, which proposes the drugs classification system be rethought.

The study by the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, The Guardian reports.

The study examines nine categories of harm that drugs can do to the individual "from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships" and seven types of possible harm to others.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Out of a maximum harm score of 100, alcohol scored 72 - easily beating 55 for heroin and 54 for crack.

The most dangerous drugs to their individual users were ranked as heroin, crack and then crystal meth.

The most harmful to others were alcohol, heroin and crack, in that order.

For overall harm, the other drugs examined ranked as follows: crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20), GHB (18), benzodiazepines (15), ketamine (15), methadone (13), butane (10), qat (9), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine (6), and magic mushrooms (5).

The study, published by medical journal The Lancet, was led by former government drugs adviser David Nutt, who was sacked last year by the home secretary at the time, Alan Johnson, for challenging ministers' refusal to take advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

The committee wanted cannabis to remain a class C drug and for ecstasy to be downgraded from class A, arguing these were less harmful than other drugs.

"Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm," the authors of the study wrote.

Nutt told the Lancet a new classification system would depend on what set of harms "to self or others" you were trying to reduce.

"But if you take overall harm, then alcohol, heroin and crack are clearly more harmful than all others, so perhaps drugs with a score of 40 or more could be class A, 39 to 20 class B, 19-10 class C, or under 10 class D."

This would result in tobacco being labelled a class B drug alongside cocaine, while ecstasy and LSD would end up in the lowest drug category, D.
© 2010 AAP

 

[canadiancracker]

i agree i rather be around a bunch of fucked up people on crack than around a bunch of drunks...

i was raised by 2 drunks. ill have the occationnal drink to sociallize but i always regret the times i get smashed. the next day because of the hangover and because of the moodswings and fights caused by my drinking.. too many people use the excuse "but i was drunk" IMO if you cant handle the booze dont fucking drink..

the only reason that weed is still illegal is because the government (the biggest drug dealers) cant control its growth. they would lose taxes on beer, the drug companies and more. booze makes the gov a shitload of money....

the government doesnt care about people all they care about is power. and to have power they need money.. so they tax anything and everything they can.. they keep weed illegal to stop its free trade and growth. by promoting fear of prison and shit.

weed being illegal creates more money for the system. cops, lawyers, judges, house repos, private prisons, and more... its all a big slaveship. aint life fun...

 

[John Bourne]

too many major corporate interests conflict with the facts. none of this is news to the cannabis community., maybe the public at large will finally start waking up!

 

[Cookie monster]

The study is flawed.....

Alcohol is legal and much more readily available than heroin, weed, E or a lot of the 20 or so drugs involved in the study.
Were all drugs equally legal and available to the same extent then the results would be different.

Weed will still be at the bottom of the pile tho

 

[Maria_Vanessa]

Time magazine is also running the same story.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/01/the-most-dangerous-drugs-alcohol-heroin-and-crack%E2%80%94in-that-order/

The Most Dangerous Drugs? Alcohol, Heroin and Crack—in That Order

By Catherine Mayer Monday, November 1, 2010

How often does life really imitate art? Let's imagine that a writer has been commissioned to develop a comedic screenplay about the deeply serious business of how to classify and control drugs. The plot is likely to feature that staple slapstick character “the mad scientist,” and since Hollywood tends to choose Britons to portray its eccentrics and villains, the writer makes the scientist a British professor. What's a good name for a nutty professor? Why not Professor Nutt? The problem with this scenario, as the writer discovers, is that there's a real Professor Nutt, a campaigning British scientist who avers in a new study, Drug Harms in the U.K., that if you're looking for the most dangerous drug of all, you have to start with alcohol, which is more harmful even than heroin and crack cocaine. (More on Time.com: 4 Reasons Binge Drinking Is a Public Health Problem)

Nutt—his first name is David, and he holds the chair in neuropsychopharmacology at London's Imperial College, a university globally renowned as a seat of scientific excellence—is not mad, though conservative columnists regularly question his sanity. He was sacked as an adviser to Britain's last Labor government for challenging official policy to reclassify cannabis from a class C to a class B drug — boosting its threat level — and for suggesting that ecstasy, by contrast, should be downgraded from class A.

Nutt also outraged the establishment by comparing one of its favorite pursuits, horse-riding, to ecstasy use, in order to illustrate the way in which the risks of certain drugs were routinely and reflexively overstated. “Equasy” — equine addiction syndrome, in other words, riding — caused 10 deaths and more than 100 road accidents a year, he wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2009. “Making riding illegal would completely prevent all these harms and would be, in practice, very easy to do…This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates — indeed encourages — certain forms of potentially harmful behavior but not others, such as drug use.”

Generating splenetic headlines isn't Nutt's aim. Generating debate is. His research into the damage caused by drugs, and the legislative framework designed to minimize these harms, has instilled in him a passionate belief that drug policy needs to be more firmly based on scientific evidence. (More on Time.com: 7 Tips for California: How to Make Legalizing Marijuana Smart)

“By legislating on a substance without reliable scientifically based evidence, we run the risk of causing more harm through criminalizing users than might be caused by the drug itself,” he writes in the latest post on his personal blog, Evidence not Exaggeration. “The evidence on drug harms should not be sacrificed for political and media pressure.”

That's the spirit behind his new study, authored with Leslie King and Lawrence Phillips and newly published in the medical journal, The Lancet. By analyzing the impact of 20 drugs in terms of 16 criteria highlighting their effect on users (health issues, dependency, mental impairment, loss of tangibles such as job, loss of relationships, injury) and on the people and society they interact with (crime, degradation of local environment, family strains, and wider issues such as economic cost), Nutt produced a ranking. He found that alcohol was the most harmful drug overall — and anyone who has seen the Saturday night transformation of British city centers into battlegrounds of blood and vomit will understand this point — followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine proved the most injurious to the individuals using the drugs. Cannabis ranked 8th most harmful, after two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco. (More on Time.com: Marijuana as Gateway Drug: The Myth That Will Not Die)

Booze and cigarettes do “have commercial benefits to society in terms of providing work and tax, which to some extent offset the harms,” notes the report, while concluding that “aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy.” The report also admits that “many of the harms of drugs are affected by their availability and legal status.”

That's a key point likely to be picked up by critics of any moves to decriminalize marijuana, who say the social harms of the drug would increase in proportion to its availability. The voters of California will put that view to the test if they decide to support Proposition 19 in tomorrow's ballot.

 

[EliTheBarrowBoy]

Humans cause more harm than alcohol, heroin, and cocaine.

 

[Baba Ku]

There is no scale. Something is either fucked up or it is not.
Shades of fucked up? I dun thin so, Babalou.

Alcohol: fucked up
Cocaine: fucked up
Heroin: fucked up
Cannabis: not at all fucked up and among the most righteous of earthly products

 

[InvisibleEmpire]

Mainstream Media: Alcohol "most harmful" drug beating crack and heroin

Mainstream Media: Alcohol "most harmful" drug beating crack and heroin

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/01/alcohol.harm/index.html?hpt=Sbin

London, England (CNN) -- Alcohol ranks "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs, beating out crack and heroin when assessed for its potential harm to the individual imbibing and harm to others, according to study results released by a British medical journal.

A panel of experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall, according to an article on the study released by The Lancet on Sunday.

Using a new scale to evaluate harms to individual users and others, alcohol received a score of 72 on a scale of 1 to 100, the study says. It was compared to 19 other drugs using 16 criteria: nine related to the adverse effects the drug has on an individual and seven on its harm against others.

That makes it almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco, according to the article, which is slated to be published on The Lancet's website Monday and in an upcoming print edition of the journal.

Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine were the most harmful drugs to individuals, the study says, while alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others.

In the article, the panelists said their findings show that Britain's three-tiered drug classification system, which places drugs into different categories that determine criminal penalties for possession and dealing, has "little relation to the evidence of harm."

Panelists also noted that the rankings confirm other studies that say that "aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

The Lancet article was co-authored by David Nutt, a professor and Britain's former chief drug adviser, who caused controversy last year after he published an article saying ecstasy was not as dangerous as riding a horse.

"So why are harmful sporting activities allowed, whereas relatively less harmful drugs are not?" Nutt wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. "I believe this reflects a societal approach which does not adequately balance the relative risks of drugs against their harms."

Nutt later apologized to to anyone offended by the article and to those who have lost loved ones to ecstasy. He said he had no intention of trivializing the dangers of the drug and that he only wanted to compare the risks.

In the article released by The Lancet on Sunday, ecstasy's harmfulness ranking -- 9 -- indicates it is only one-eighth as harmful as alcohol.

The study was funded by the London-based Centre for Crime and Justice studies.

 

[Bettysmith]

The Lancet article was co-authored by David Nutt, a professor and Britain's former chief drug adviser, who caused controversy last year after he published an article saying ecstasy was not as dangerous as riding a horse

Well... riding a horse is most certainly not nearly as fun.

This has been common knowledge to those who actually care to find out for themselves for quite some time though. It's a shame a majority of voters just don't give a fuck though.

 

[alpo]

repost...

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=193466