UK: Scientists want new drug rankings [Merged]

7zark7

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Scientists want new drug rankings
Friday, 23 March 2007, 00:05 GMT

The drug classification system in the UK is not "fit for purpose" and should be scrapped, scientists have said.

They have drawn up an alternative system which they argue more accurately reflects the harm that drugs do.

The new ranking system places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table, ahead of cannabis and several Class A drugs such as ecstasy.

The study, published in The Lancet, has been welcomed by a team reviewing drug research for the government.

The Academy of Medical Sciences group plans to put its recommendations to ministers in the autumn.

A new commission is also due to undertake a three-year review of general government drug policy.

The new system has been developed by a team led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

It assesses drugs on the harm they do to the individual, to society and whether or not they induce dependence.

A panel of experts were asked to rate 20 different drugs on nine individual categories, which were combined to produce an overall estimate of harm.

In order to provide familiar benchmarks, five legal drugs, including tobacco and alcohol were included in the assessment. Alcohol was rated the fifth most dangerous substance, and tobacco ninth.

Heroin was rated as the most dangerous drug, followed by cocaine and barbiturates. Ecstasy, however, rated only 18th, while cannabis was 11th.

The researchers said the current ABC system was too arbitrary, and failed to give specific information about the relative risks of each drug.

It also gave too much importance to unusual reactions, which would only affect a tiny number of users.

Professor Nutt said people were not deterred by scare messages, which simply served to undermine trust in warnings about the danger of drugs.

He said: "The current system is not fit for purpose. Let's treat people as adults. We should have a much more considered debate how we deal with dangerous drugs."

He highlighted the fact that one person a week in the UK dies from alcohol poisoning, while less than 10 deaths a year are linked to ecstasy use.

Professor Blakemore said it was clear that current drugs' policies were not working.

"We face a huge problem. Illegal substances have never been more easily available, or more widely abused."

He said the beauty of the new system, unlike the current version, was that it could easily be updated to reflect new research.

Professor Leslie Iversen, a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences group considering drug policy, said the new system was a "landmark paper".

He said: "It is a real step towards evidence-based classification of drugs."

Professor Iversen said the fact that 500,000 young people routinely took ecstasy every weekend proved that current drug policy was in need of reform.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: "We have no intention of reviewing the drug classification system.

"Our priority is harm reduction and to achieve this we focus on enforcement, education and treatment."

He said there had been "unparalleled investment" of £7.5 billion since 1998, which had contributed to a 21% reduction in overall drug misuse in the last nine years and a fall of 20% in drug related crime since 2004.

But he added: "The government is not complacent and will continue to work with all of our partners to build on this progress."


Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6474053.stm
 
^ It involves smoking, which then involves lung complications, cancers etc. (yes, I know the evidence for those is kinda shaky, but surely you realise that inhaling smoke of any kinda is worse than not inhaling smoke at all). And yes, you can bake it into things, vaporise it etc to avoid smoking, but most people aren't going to do that.
 
panic_the_digital said:
^Yeah, but who has died from smoking weed?

Probably plenty of people... just because you can't overdose doesn't mean the lung cancer won't kill you down the road. Honestly though, I have my doubts when it comes to cannabis-related cancer, but then again, 'Bob Marley' is all I've got to say about that.

Where does (meth)amphetamine rank on that list?
 
^
amphetamine is 8th most harmful apparently. see below.




also what on earth is khat!? never heard of this as a street drug full stop. educate me plaese
 
Drink 'More Harmful Than Drugs' -- Alcohol is ranked almost as harmful as heroin...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6502012,00.html

Drink 'More Harmful Than Drugs' -- Alcohol is ranked almost as harmful as heroin in a controversial new drug classification system proposed by a team of leading scientists
Drink 'more harmful than drugs'

Press Association
Friday March 23, 2007 5:08 AM

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.

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.
 
drklnk said:
Looks like poppers and e are the best way for you to party!


Guess I'll have to get rid of all my alcohol and pot and use more solvents, poppers, and XTC
 
An why is smoked crystal meth not ranked since smoking is apparently an issue with cannabis? Why is ecstasy so low while coke is second highest?

Admittedly, no ranking can satisfy everybody. It may have a bias in favor of Ecstasy, for instance, owing to the difficulty of policing hte massive use of it in Britain on Saturday nights (ie scientists in Marocco would rate it the most dangerous drug because it's hardly available at all in Marocco). But it's a good start: alcohol tops many illegal drugs. Now there remains to ban alcohol or liberalise the drugs to the right of alcohol. Fat chance of that though. Before soon politicians will go on the record to say that, although they respect the scientists' study, "more studies are needed" and changing sentencing would "send out the wrong signal", bla-bla-bla.
 
I'm guessing Methamphetamine isn't inlcuded because this is a British study and meth is rare in the UK still.
 
Smoking is only an issue when it involves combustion products, like tars, cancer-causing aromatics, etc.
"Smoking" meth isn't really. You're just vaporising the drug into gas phase and inhaling that.
 
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