Alcohol more dangerous than crack cocaine

Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 November 2010 21:50 Monday, 01 November 2010 20:48

A new study says alcohol is more harmful than drugs like heroin and crack cocaine. Which justifies my stance that we should all gather to socialize over a few rock crystals rather than downing liters of piss-yellow matured water. We'd actually be less dangerous to society, plus we'd save hours of our own time rather than wasting them in some bar droning the ears off strangers.

The study by the Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) in the UK looked at the dangers to the individual and wider society. Alcohol easily came out on top as the most dangerous substance. The authors devised their own system to judge substances and the findings challenge long held views about the hierarchy of 'badness' in substances.

The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet found heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine (crystal meth) to be the most dangerous for the individual. But when the wider social effects were accounted for, alcohol was the most dangerous, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Alcohol scored 72 (out of 100), heroin scored 55 and crack, 54.

The result of indulging in Class A drugs - like Bud and Heineken...

The study was led by former UK government drugs adviser David Nutt. It categorized the harm drugs can do into nine categories, from the individual level (factors like mortality, poor health, impaired mental functioning, loss of friends and injury) to the damage they can do to others (factors like crime, environmental damage, declines in community cohesion and family conflict). The authors concluded that  "Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm. They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harm is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

Nutt argues that a reclassicification of drugs is necessary if the real dangers of drugs are to be recognised. An 'overall' based classification might see alcohol, heroin and crack as class A drugs, with tobacco and cocaine as class B drugs. Such a classification would take into account the actual cost from alcohol abuse which runs into billions in policing cosst, hospitalisations and alcohol related crime.

Nutt was actually fired last year by the UK Labor Government after he said that estasy was less harmful than alcohol. He concludes that “our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm.”