Alcohol is a more dangerous drug
than heroin or crack cocaine, a study claims.
Scientists have found that alcohol
is the most harmful drug overall and three times as harmful as cocaine and
tobacco, according to a new scale of drug harm that rates the damage to both
users and to wider society.
Ecstasy is only an eighth as
harmful as alcohol, according to the new analysis, led by the controversial
sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway
Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs.
The study says that if drugs were
classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A,
alongside heroin and crack cocaine.
The findings of the study are
likely to reignite the debate over the government’s drugs classification
system.
Professor David Nutt was sacked
last year by then home secretary Alan Johnson after he challenged ministers
over their refusal to take the advice of the official Advisory Council on the
Misuse of Drugs, which he chaired.
Professor Nutt said the findings
showed that ‘aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary
public health strategy.’
In his study, Professor Nutt and
his team examined nine categories of harm that drugs can do to the individual
‘from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships’, as well
as seven types of harm to others.
Overall, alcohol scored 72 out of a
maximum ‘harm’ score of 100, compared to 55 for heroin and 54 for crack.
And while the most dangerous drugs
to individual users were judged to be heroin, crack and then crystal meth,
alcohol was deemed most harmful to society, followed by heroin and then crack.
Drink problem: Overall, alcohol
scored 72 out of a maximum harm score of 100, compared to 55 for heroin and 54
for crack
Nutt said a new classification
system ‘would depend on what set of harms “to self or others” you are trying to
reduce’.
‘But if you take overall harm, then
alcohol, heroin and crack are clearly more harmful than all others, so perhaps
drugs with a score of 40 or more could be class A; 39 to 20 class B; 19-10
class C and 10 or under class D,’ he added.
This reclassification
would result in tobacco being labelled a class B drug alongside cocaine.
Related Videos
