LONDON —
Alcohol is a more dangerous drug than both crack and heroin when the
combined harms to the user and to others are assessed, British
scientists said Monday. Presenting a new scale of drug harm that
rates the damage to users themselves and to wider society, the
scientists rated alcohol the most harmful overall and almost three times
as harmful as cocaine or tobacco. According to the scale,
devised by a group of scientists including Britain's Independent
Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and an expert adviser to the
European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), heroin
and crack cocaine rank as the second and third most harmful drugs. Ecstasy is only an eighth as harmful as alcohol, according to the scientists' analysis. Professor
David Nutt, chairman of the ISCD, whose work was published in the
Lancet medical journal, said the findings showed that "aggressively
targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health
strategy." He said they also showed that current drug classification systems had little relation to the evidence of harm. Alcohol
and tobacco are legal for adults in Britain and many other countries,
while drugs such as ecstasy and cannabis and LSD are often illegal and
carry the threat of prison sentences. "It is intriguing to note
that the two legal drugs assessed -- alcohol and tobacco -- score in the
upper segment of the ranking scale, indicating that legal drugs cause
at least as much harm as do illegal substances," Nutt, who was formerly
head of the influential British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs
(ACMD), said in a statement about the study. Nutt was forced to
quit the ACMD a year ago after publicly criticizing ministers for
ignoring scientific advice suggesting cannabis was less harmful than
alcohol. The World Health Organization estimates that risks
linked to alcohol cause 2.5 million deaths a year from heart and liver
disease, road accidents, suicides and cancer -- accounting for 3.8
percent of all deaths. It is the third leading risk factor for premature
death and disabilities worldwide. In an effort to offer a guide
to policy makers in health, policing, and social care, Nutt's team rated
drugs using a technique called multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA)
which assessed damage according to nine criteria on harm to the user and
seven criteria on harm to others. Harms to the user included
things such as drug-specific or drug-related death, damage to health,
drug dependence and loss of relationships, while harms to others
included crime, environmental damage, family conflict, international
damage, economic cost, and damage to community cohesion. Drugs were then scored out of 100, with 100 given to the most harmful drug and zero indicating no harm at all. The scientists found alcohol was most harmful, with a score of 72, followed by heroin with 55 and crack with 54. Among
some of the other drugs assessed were crystal meth (33), cocaine (27),
tobacco (26), amphetamine or speed (23), cannabis (20), benzodiazepines,
such as Valium (15), ketamine (15), methadone (14), mephedrone (13),
ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7) and magic mushrooms (5). (Editing by Alison Williams) (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. Check for restrictions at: |
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