Scientists say alcohol is nearly as harmful as heroin Options

[simon]

This is in the UK news today, what are your thoughts and comments ?


http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=4405588


Scientists say alcohol is nearly as harmful as heroin

Alcohol is ranked almost as harmful as heroin in a controversial new drug classification system proposed by a team of leading scientists.

The class A drug Ecstasy, possession of which can result in a seven-year prison sentence, is placed near the bottom of the league table which lists "harm scores" for different substances.

LSD, another class A drug, is also considered relatively safe despite its powerful hallucinogenic properties.

Cannabis, recently downgraded to class C, occupies a middle position. It is rated more dangerous than Ecstasy, LSD and the dance floor drug GHB, but less harmful than tobacco.

The table, published in The Lancet medical journal, was drawn up by a team of highly respected scientists led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

It is intended to be a model for policy makers which is more scientifically based than the current Misuse of Drugs Act system that attaches "a, b, and c" labels to illicit drugs.

The scientists identified three main factors that together determined the harmfulness of a controlled substance.

These were: The physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug, the tendency of the drug to induce dependence, and the effect of the drug's use on families, communities and society.

Unsurprisingly, the results placed heroin at the head of the table with an overall "harm score" of 2.7, followed by cocaine which scored 2.3.

But more controversially, alcohol is ranked as the fifth most dangerous drug, scoring just under 2 on the table.

[trojan_libido]

The reason that the research does not take into account the 'rehabs full of psychotics' is probably because there is no confirmed link and no real circumstancial evidence for it.

If they were really psychotic then they wouldn't be in rehab. You seem to be confusing how we recover from an addiction with how we live with psychological disorders.

My brother died from heroin and crack abuse. He spent half his life in jail due to shoplifting and such to fund his habit. Whenever he was on a binge, he was also drinking. Alcohol was his default baseline.

My oldest friend from a broken and abusive home, was burned very badly in his late teens. He was always a drunk, but now he's dangerously close to complete failure of several organs, and its down to alcohol abuse. When he manages not to drink, he simply self medicates with prescription downers and sleeps. He classes this as him not drinking, when really its just him not concious. He can drink 8 cans of lager, then actually believe himself when he says 'I've not had a drink today' simply because it didn't get him drunk.

Society is a hypocritical and ignorant collection of people. Either people know of the dangers of alcohol and admitting it would cause to much mental and political unrest, or they don't really know much of anything about drugs and have far too much to say about it.

The 'War on Drugs' is a political strategy for fooling dumb voters and its also somewhere to place the blame for the deterioration of society, instead of placing blame on the politicians. it just doesn't actually make any difference to supply, it only compromises the safety of the user. The safety of the user has already been compromised when we are surrounded by alcohol and nicotine in 'safe' enviroments.

This really gets my back up because these studies are being done the world over, and they always yield the same results. The damn politicians ignore those results, and then say they're acting in our best interests!