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May 09, 2007
| Towards A Rational Drug Policy | Rights, Law |
An article in The Lancet classifies drugs by the harm they do, rather by the social stigma attached to them. The results are interesting, though they shouldn't be too surprising. Telegraph:
Alcohol is ranked much more harmful than the Class A drug ecstasy in a controversial new classification system proposed by a team of leading scientists.The table, published today in The Lancet medical journal, was drawn up by a team of highly respected experts led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.
The authors proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do, rather than the sharp A, B, and C divisions in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act.
They say the basis of the Act is ill-defined, opaque, and seemingly arbitrary and overestimates the risks of ecstasy, which kills around ten people annually of the half a million people who use it every weekend, while neglecting those of alcohol, a legal substance which kills more than 300 annually [in the UK] by acute poisoning, and many tens of thousands by road traffic accidents, cirrhosis, gut and heart disease.
In the paper, the team argues that it would make much more sense for drugs to be reclassified on a rational basis that can be updated as new evidence emerges, and more easily than the current rigid category system now in use. [...]
In the new system legal drugs, such as alcohol and nicotine, are ranked alongside illegal drugs.
The new ranking places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table. These socially accepted drugs were judged more harmful than cannabis, and substantially more dangerous than the Class A drugs LSD, 4-methylthioamphetamine and ecstasy.
"Alcohol is not far behind demonised terrors of the street such as heroin and cocaine," said Prof Blakemore.
But the conclusions are likely to be ignored, according to coauthor Prof David Nutt from the University of Bristol, who has worked with the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. [...]
Prof Nutt said that young people believe that the establishment lies and distorts the dangers posed by drugs and the only way to restore their confidence is to rely on hard evidence, not arbitrary classifications. [Emphasis added]
Makes sense, but we can expect it to be ignored by policy-makers (who are a hell of a lot more likely to drink and use tobacco than they are to take acid or ecstasy). Which will only add to the perception that most of what we're told about psychoactive drugs is BS.
Posted by Jonathan at May 9, 2007 05:23 PM
