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The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High
By Jack O'Brien .

Alcohol worse than ecstasy on shock new drug list

James Randerson, science correspondent
Friday March 23, 2007
The Guardian

Some of Britain's leading drug experts demand today that the
government's classification regime be scrapped and replaced
by one that more honestly reflects the harm caused by alcohol
and tobacco. They say the current ABC system is "arbitrary"
and not based on evidence.

The scientists, including members of the government's top
advisory committee on drug classification, have produced a
rigorous assessment of the social and individual harm caused
by 20 substances, and believe this should form the basis of any
future ranking.

By their analysis, alcohol and tobacco are rated as more
dangerous than cannabis, LSD and ecstasy.

They say that if the current ABC system is retained, alcohol
would be rated a class A drug and tobacco class B.

"We face a huge problem," said Colin Blakemore, chief
executive of the Medical Research Council and an author of the
report, which is published in the Lancet medical journal. "Drugs
... have never been more easily available, have never been
cheaper, never been more potent and never been more widely
used.

"The policies we have had for the last 40 years ... clearly have
not worked in terms of reducing drug use. So I think it does
deserve a fresh look. The principal objective of this study was
to bring a dispassionate approach to what is a very passionate
issue."

David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at Bristol University and
member of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs (ACMD)
which advises ministers on drug policy, added: "What we are
trying to say is we should review the penalties in the light of the
harms and try to have a more proportionate legal response.

"The point we are making is that all drugs are dangerous, even
the ones that people know and love and use regularly like
alcohol."

Professor Nutt and his team analysed the evidence of harm
caused by 20 drugs including heroin, cocaine, cannabis,
ecstasy, LSD and tobacco.

They asked a group of 29 consultant psychiatrists who
specialise in addiction to rate the drugs in nine categories.
Three of these related to physical harm, three to the likelihood
of addiction and three to social harms such as healthcare costs.
The team also extended the analysis to another group of 16
experts spanning several fields including chemistry,
pharmacology, psychiatry, forensics, police and legal services.

The final rankings placed heroin and cocaine as the most
dangerous of the 20 drugs. Alcohol was fifth, the class C drug
ketamine sixth and tobacco was in ninth place, just behind
amphetamine or "speed".

Cannabis was 11th, while LSD and ecstasy were 14th and 18th
respectively. The rankings do take into account new evidence
that specially cultivated "skunk" varieties of cannabis available
now are two to three times stronger than traditional cannabis
resin.

Evan Harris MP, the Liberal Democrats' science spokesman,
said the paper undermines the government's claim that drug
policy is evidence-based. "This comes from the top echelons of
the government's own advisory committee on the misuse of
drugs. It blows a hole in the government's current classification
system for drugs." He said the ACMD should make
recommendations to ministers on how to change drug policy
based on the findings.

But the shadow home secretary, David Davis, rejected any
changes that would confuse the public. "Drugs wreck lives,
destroy communities and fuel other sorts of crime - especially
gun and knife crime. Thanks to the government's chaotic and
confused approach to drugs policy, young people increasingly
think it is OK to take drugs," he said, adding that he was
against downgrading of ecstasy. "It is vital nothing else leads
young people to believe drugs are OK."

The position of ecstasy near the bottom of the list was defended
by Prof Nutt, who said that apart from some tragic isolated
cases ecstasy is relatively safe. Despite about a third of young
people having tried the drug and around half a million users
every weekend, it causes fewer than 10 deaths a year. One
person a day is killed by acute alcohol poisoning and thousands
more from chronic use.

Prof Nutt said young people already know ecstasy is relatively
safe, so having it in class A makes a mockery of the entire
classification system for them. "The whole harm-reduction
message disappears because people say, 'They are lying.' Let's
treat people as adults, tell them the truth and hopefully work
with them to minimise use."

Another advantage of the new system, according to Professor
Blakemore, is that it would be easy to tweak the rankings
based on new evidence.

The public furore over the downgrading of cannabis from B to
C, he said, showed how hard it is to change drug classifications
once they are fixed. "[Our system] would be easy to use on a
rolling basis, to reassess the harms of drugs as evidence
developed," he said.
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