Ecstasy 'no worse than horse riding'
Agence France-Presse
February 08, 2009 07:24am
TAKING the synthetic drug ecstasy, which is derived from amphetamine, is no more dangerous than horse riding, Britain's top drug adviser said today.
According to Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), "equasy" - addiction to horse riding - causes 10 deaths and more than 100 road traffic deaths annually.
Fatalities linked to ecstasy use total around 30 per year.
The ACMD, however, insisted that his remarks were made as an academic and not in his position as head of the interior ministry's drug advisory group.
Prof Nutt's remarks come ahead of an expected decision by the ACMD to recommend that ecstasy be downgraded in Britain from Class A, representing the most harmful drugs, to the less dangerous Class B rating, a move the government opposes.
"The point was to get people to understand that drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life," Prof Nutt wrote in an article in the latest edition of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
"There is not much difference between horse riding and ecstasy."
Prof Nutt added: "This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates - indeed encourages - certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others such as drug use."
A spokesman for the ACMD, meanwhile, said: "The recent article by Professor David Nutt published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology was done in respect of his academic work and not as chair of the ACMD.
"Professor Nutt's academic work does not prejudice that which he conducts as chair of the ACMD."
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