• 🇳🇿 🇲🇲 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 🇦🇶 🇮🇳
    Australian & Asian
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

NEWS: Gotcha Blog - 09/08/2006 'Alcohol and tobacco worse than LSD or ecstasy'

hoptis

hoptis

Bluelight Crew
Joined
May 1, 2002
Messages
11,083
Alcohol and tobacco worse than LSD or ecstasy
Gotcha Blog
By Gary Hughes
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 at 12:03am

Here’s one for all the Gotcha readers who launch attacks on me whenever I post on the dangers of illicit drugs, claiming that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous. Two of the British Government’s most senior drug policy scientific advisors have just ranked alcohol and tobacco ahead of such Class A illegal drugs LSD and ecstasy in terms of the dangers they pose.

On a new "league table" of both legal and illegal drugs, based on the harm they do, alcohol is listed as the fifth most dangerous drug and tobacco the ninth. That would male alcohol a likely Class A drug and tobacco a Class B drug – both illegal under the current classification system.

According to Professor David Nutt of the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, who drew up the list, tobacco and alcohol cause about 40 times the total number of deaths from all illegal drugs combined.

The list was provided to a UK parliamentary committee, which has just released a report delivering a broadside at the British Government’s illicit drugs policy. It said there was little connection between the danger posed by drugs and their classification on the illegal drugs scale. Some drugs had been added to the classified list because of political pressure or media attention, rather than because they were dangerous.

In the UK six drugs are Class A: heroin, LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, methyamphetamine, and illegal or "street" methadone. Tobacco and alcohol related deaths in the UK total 162,000 a year. The biggest killer behind tobacco and alcohol is methadone, which is prescribed to help treat heroin addicts.

Here’s the "league table" of drugs ranked by the risk they pose:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbiturates,
4. Methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines
8. Amphetamine
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. Methtamphetamine (4-MTA)
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate
16. Anabolic Steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrites
20. Khat

The parliamentary committee has said officially publishing such a list, where drugs were decoupled from criminal penalties, would "give the public a better sense of the relative harms involved".
Click to expand...

From Gotcha Blog, News.com.au

If you feel like it, pop in and add your comments to this article!
 
In my opinion unless your injecting i dont see how diamorphine is worse than alcohol.
 
Can you feel it? There's a change coming... battern down the hatches! =D just wait till this sort of thing hits the mainstream media in aus! The steps may be small but its all in the right direction =D The truth is out there
 
I really do not think that ranking has a lot of merit...without actually reading any of their reasoning i would genuinely struggle to see how cannabis could possibly, POSSIBLY be classed ahead of meth...

I would really query what the fuck somebody on a medical council would realistically know about the actual harm a drug is capable of causing when they know fuck all of anything about just how addictive something is first hand...?! How can amphetamine be ranked higher than methamphetamine? Doesnt make any sense to me at all?

Anybody wanna spot me a heads up on exactly why ketamine is so incredibly harmful?
 
While I 100% support what Gary Hughes is saying - his source of evidence at least in my opinion, looks like a random, unordered list of drugs. Amphetamine more risky than Methtamphetamine? and def with Cyberdyne: 11. Cannabis, wtf!
 
I think that it is only a matter of time before there is massive media interest in this too.. the facts are there, and everyone knows.

I still cannot believe the government allows the sale of cigarettes. They put the pictures of the possible diseases on packets to deter smokers, fully aware of the risk it poses to humans, yet do not take it off the shelves due to the huge tax they earn from the sale of tobacco products (and alcohol also).

I really fucking despise the Australian government for this reason particularly. What a bunch of hypocritcal hollow noggins.
 
Interesting report.

Here's a link to a UK newspaper article on it:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/66958-print.shtml

And to the UK parliament report (specifically - the risk assessment methodology):
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/1031/103110.htm#a30

As you can see, a matrix was developed to measure different aspects of potential harm for each drug. This is a good stab at quantitative assessment of harm, but as the report says, deciding the weighting for each individual aspect is indeed "non-trivial".

For the record, drug number 8 is "amphetamines" - this refers to both methamphetamine and amphetamine. They are not ranked differently; 4MTA is not methamphetamine - the blog writer made an error in transcribing the original (see also erowid http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/4mta/4mta.shtml ).
 
I'd say the social costs of "illegal" drugs would be significant less if users got clean drugs, prescribed after a health check from doctors and were produced by a nationalised manufacturer - with education thrown in at every level.

If these steps were taken the vast majority of substances could be used safely.
 
ketamine is not more dangerous than ghb imo i'd like to see the statistics they used to create this "league" cuz if alcohol and ciggarettes kill 40 times more people than any other drug why arent they sitting at the top of the list
 
Without even looking at the methodology it simply must be ridiculously arbitrary...

While its nice that you can try and put an objective overall measure on things, it appers quite obvious to me from this ranking that it cannot ever, EVER be done on a single measure, and any measure that is produced, is about as useless as a monkey picking out of a slightly ordered barrel

Drugs need to be ranked in different classes of harm, then have that overall impact weighed as a whole within the society they are being evaluated in.

ie
potentially seriously harmful immediate physical side effects
Subversive long term physical side effects
potentially harmful immediate mental side effects
Long term brain damage potential
Potential for serious addiction
Potential for overdose inducing death or heightened risk in an aforementioned factor
Other risks

So ranking, lets say, GHB in these categories,
-we would have notes under physical side effects relating to the reaction time etc which could lead to road fatalities.
-In long term physical side effects a mention of strain on the liver
-for mental side effects we would have jack diddly shit unless im mistaken...
-Addiction potential would be somewhere in the medium band taking into account the fairly serious problems associated with ghb withdrawl and its dopaminergic properties
-Potential for overdose would be regarding as extremely high.
-There might also be noted in other risks the possibility of wide availability making it more common to use as a date rape drug.
-This would then overall give us a picture where G is still regarded as something that should possibly still be regulated due to serious consequences which may occur from high doses, but still makes clear that medical, it is pretty much regarded as a big fat non harmful.
These could then all be weighed against potential benefits and the risks associated with a black market etc to come to a final verdict as to the overal harm in society of the drug.
 
Hater said:
ketamine is not more dangerous than ghb imo i'd like to see the statistics they used to create this "league" cuz if alcohol and ciggarettes kill 40 times more people than any other drug why arent they sitting at the top of the list
Click to expand...

Heroin and cocaine are quite correctly ranked near the top imo. That degree of addictive potential takes away ones ability to even consent to ingesting the substance.
 
Barbiturates? Are they even used medically at all nowadays, I didn't think that they were? How would people get them?
 
Is "the risk they pose" based upon the percentage of deaths per users? Are there any other contributing factors to this "they risk they pose" classification? Are there scientific studies, or just mathematical ones?

Most importantly, who, or what do these drugs pose a risk too... Society? The indivual? The individual's family? As much as I would like to agree that this list seems fairly accurate according to the risk to the indivual, we haven't studied the long term effects of most of these drugs... GHB is what, like 20 years old? Extasy is slightly older? LSD is only around 50 to 75 years old. Compared to the 2000 years of historical evidence supporting the idea that Alcohol and Tobacco don't adversly effect society, you could blame everything on whichever drug was most closely discovered to the time that YOU think the world started going downhill, and few could argue. I started eating potatoes when I was 3, and my life has been going downhill ever since... damn potatoes...

(I know I should erad the links but I don't come to bluelight to leave bluelight)
 
ayjay said:
Interesting report.

Here's a link to ...
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. :)

The blog writer has had a go at trying to explain further in one of the comments:

Mrniceguy,

The drugs appear to be ranked both on the physical harm they cause to the user and the harm done to society through such things as causing violent behaviour (which is why alcohol is ahead of tobacco, depite tobacco killing more people than booze).

...

- Gary Hughes
Click to expand...

(See first comment on article page)

While it's fair that not everyone will agree with the table, I think the point was to highlight the inadequacies of the classification system for drugs in the UK where drugs like LSD are Class A along with heroin and meth.

Hopefully this type of discussion in the UK will have repercussions in other like-minded countries, including Australia with those in the judiciary who still believe drugs like ecstasy should be sentenced the same way as heroin.
 
Some additional links can be found on a similar thread on the Front Page

This graph from here



_41949092_drugs_graph_416.gif
 
I fail to see how meth is less dangerous than the drugs above it, and heroin in itself is not particularly dangerous, the biggest problems come from poor injecting proceedures. I agree that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than many Class As, but this list is a load of crap.
 
how the hell can they say Cannabis and LSD is more dangerous than GHB?!!!!
 
mepat1111 said:
I fail to see how meth is less dangerous than the drugs above it, and heroin in itself is not particularly dangerous, the biggest problems come from poor injecting proceedures. I agree that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than many Class As, but this list is a load of crap.
Click to expand...

Actually, as far as im aware pure heroin is medically perfectly safe to use forever, but the research shows that poor technique etc is extremely likely to occur as well as many other hygience etc related problems due to the fact that people simply stop caring about their health once they have spent a bit of time on it.

And in regards to teh post below, technically ghb has no harmful effects whatsoever if used safely and correctly...its just how its used which is the problem,

and yes, both these comments show that when it comes down to it, these rankings are simply value judgments of completely incommensurable values....how do we compare almost inevitable serious neglect of health, to the high risk of negligent incorrect dosing leading to death?

How can we compare the possibility of long term degradation of serotonin receptors to a heightened risk of inducing predisposed schizophrenia?

It really is just dumb to provide one overall ranking...bare minimum is to split into categories then rank the categories in order of importance based on sound political theory imo (ie harm to oneself is not as serious as harm to others)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top