Several other members of the drugs advisory board resigned in protest. It's a typical case of the government asking scientists to come up with evidence and then refusing to see the evidence when it is presented. "You got us the wrong evidence! Get us another truth!"
At the bottom of this article, you can find the suggested classifcation by harm:
Of course, the point is not to ban alcohol, but to have a more mature debate about drugs (and possibly to unban relatively harmless drugs such as LSD, Ecstasy, Cannabis...)
It's important to note that this scale took into account number of active users. In other words, ranking weight and popularity of use are correlated.
Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.
I have no idea what this means when using the chart to back up statements about the relative harm of legalization of various substances. I'm personally still a fan of it purely through considering the volume of crime and harm sustained by the black markets. I just want to caution conclusions being drawn without analysis of the methods that produced the table.
Given the amount of misinformation that exists about drugs, the chart is probably totally justified. To make claims on it without understanding the methods is to add even more misinformation, though.
(Disclaimer, I haven't read his papers either yet)
Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.
You could then make a driving speed chart like this.
Driving 35-75 MPH would get a very big bar for both harm to others and harm to drivers, due to the volume of accidents that occur at those speeds.
Driving 76-100 MPH would have a smaller bar, because fewer drivers drive that fast.
Driving 101-130 MPH would have an even smaller bar, as you're getting into a small subset of reckless drivers.
At the bottom of the chart, you might have speeds that can only be achieved with high-performance sports cars. 160-200 MPH would have a tiny bar for both harm to others and to the driver, as barely anyone possesses both the recklessness and equipment to drive at these speeds.
So, then, that chart can get a headline reading "Driving at 35 MPH 'more harmful' than driving at 200 MPH."
Most accidents do happen between 35 and 75 mph. So most of the energy of the road safety agencies should be directed at making roads where people travel at those speeds safer.
This is what the study is intended to demonstrate: that the harm caused by alcohol is so much greater than the harm caused by Ecstasy, that alcohol should get a whole lot more attention than Ecstasy.
How stupid would it be to focus all our energies on regulating race tracks where people are allowed to drive above 130mph, "which are so much more dangerous than 35mph"? This is what our drug policy is doing... focusing on the 180mph roads even though most of the accidents are happening on the "safe" 30mph roads.
1) It's an argument against the article because the chart is presented with little consideration to the methods used to generate the chart, which are arbitrary and are homomorphic to a specific (yet unspecified) definition of harm.
2) It's easy to interpret the chart to mean that, in the driving metaphor, driving at 200 mph is safe so let's just eliminate speed limits. Again a deficiency in the definition of harm (total harm, harm per capita, economic harm, social harm, initial harm, expected lifetime harm, average harm, what does harm even mean) leading to conclusions not supported by evidence.
A more specific chart and methodology would help people to do informed reasoning. If your presentation of evidence isn't actually helping people to make more informed conclusions, what is it doing?
This is the first time I see LSD and Ecstasy put together in a harmless group together with marijuana. Am I brainwashed or are you wrong? I mean, I've smoked dope and nothing bad ever happened. But a friend of mine took ecstasy once and blew his kidneys (he's waiting for a donor now).
You're largely brainwashed. I know a fair number of people who have taken and/or continue to take Ecstasy, LSD, Mushrooms and even Cocaine, some of them on a very regular basis. None of them have ever "blown their kidneys" or, in fact, had any severe negative reaction. As non-anecdotal evidence, about a million people take ecstasy every weekend in the UK - that's not the same million people each time, so that amounts to millions of active users in the UK. If Ecstasy was so dangerous, you would see it on newspaper headlines every day.
Possible causes of your friend's unfortunate disaster include:
1) It wasn't MDMA/MDA (typical Ecstasy components), as binarymax suggested. Until drugs are legal, who the hell knows what you're actually taking. Could be anything, including washing powder. Unlikely to be actually poisonous stuff, since dealers like repeat customers too, but really, it could be anything.
2) Your friend took an exceptional amount, was not used to intoxicating substances, and had very fragile kidneys. Perhaps his kidneys were about to give up anyway, and Ecstasy just pushed him over the edge. Maybe a good drunken night would have done the same thing.
3) It was just a coincidence.
I suspect a combination of 1 and 2... probably it wasn't Ecstasy, and your friend was already in danger of blowing his kidneys anyway.
I actually did a research paper on rave culture a few years back. Pretty eye-opening; a fairly significant amount more people had died from drinking too much Red Bull than from taking ecstasy, even including where it was laced with cyanide / something equally bad to consume. It's literally one of the safest street drugs around.
>"MDMA-present" drug deaths occur at a rate of aproximately 2-3 users per 100,000 users/year. ... cigarettes ... on the order of 400 deaths per 100,000 users/year
With only "a handful" US-annually where it was the only drug, out of less than a hundred. Think alcohol can claim that?
That's some pretty interesting research, although that's looking at per user rather than per-use - I'm guessing that there's a difference if you adjusted for number of hits (I'm assuming the average smoker smokes a lot more cigarettes than the average ecstasy user pops pills).
There's validity to that... but if so, what does this imply about the two drugs? Apparently that ecstasy users are far less likely to increase their use to unsafe levels - ie, less addictive. And if not, it's even safer than it appears to be, because I'd imagine most people make the same assumption.
Either way, it falls solidly on the side favoring ecstasy over tobacco.
How would you define a "hit" anyway? Doses don't really compare, and even if it's 1-cigarette/1-pill, it's all societal how much is in each "dose"...
It does seem like a pretty tough problem to define, and the issue of addictiveness really clouds the issue.
If you try to say, what is more dangerous - taking one ecstasy tab or one cigarette - even if the ecstasy is more dangerous in the short term, the possibility of addiction could make the cigarette much worse.
I guess maybe you could work the other way - start with say, 1 cigarette, and then try to calculate what amount of ecstasy is an equivalent dose? However I would guess that it fluctuates largely on how much you have at the same time?
It sounds like you're running with the assumption that there is a consistency in the dosage. I admit there would be for cigarettes. Despite different brands offering different amounts of tar and nicotine most people stick to a particular brand and smoke a particular amount in a day.
However for ecstasy the dosages may well fluctuate wildly. Obviously to start with it isn't habitual so frequency isn't usually consistent. Even with a consistent "every Saturday night" (probably the most common dosage) due to the struggles of supply and demand in a black market you will take different quantities of different stock.
I.E. One day you'll have rubbish "Roles Royces" and you'll have 6 of em, another you'll have some nice "Mitsis" and just take 3 and on other days you'll have an insane "Red Tulip" that was incredibly more potent than all the others so you only needed one.
Of course the name never really means anything as you can have both good "mitsis" and bad "mitsis".
Then there is also the case where the pill is actually cut with something else (pretty common I believe), perhaps a bit of ketamine or god knows. The issue perhaps is that an "ecstasy" in its black market form may be very different from its medical definition making it very difficult to compare like for like.
It can really vary depending on how far you want to go with it. At the peak of usage in my youth we were all taking in excess of 30 a week, some even 30 in one evening (dropping 4 each time)!
Interesting things start to happen when you get that deep, such "mid-week blues". Where you just get really upset half-way through the week (the other side of the weekends), teary and somewhat irrational.
Typically this is around the point where people give it up due to the side-effects.
We knew we were taking too many when we uttered the words: "its tuesday, so we'll only have 6".
Thankfully it isn't at all addictive so it's not hard to stop. :)
The problem with this is that if you are to buy illegal drugs such as exstacy, you cannot verify its purity. This is another argument for legalization - quality control. I am saddened by what your friend is going through. There is no way to know what he was actually sold. The scientists are rating the actual drug. What you get on the street is a coin toss.
this is a good idea, but it makes it attractive to buy larger amounts of a known safe pill... which makes you much more vulnerable to a dealer rap if you get caught. Just another example of the insanity of our current policy.
You cannot obviously test for the presence of adulterants, but you can easily test in your own home for the relative presence of different common drugs in pills: http://www.eztest.com/
By that logic, I can quote you thousands of people who die or "blow their kidneys" thinking they are drinking ethanol (vodka), but instead get methanol, ethylene glycol, or similar poisonous additives in their conterfeit alcohol.
(That's exactly the same problem actually - buying black-market alcohol. Which is still pretty big in Russia and neighbouring countries.)
Not railing totally on your comment, because the idea is on track, but black market booze is silly. Alcohol is just ridiculously easy to create. If you have a source of sugar, or starches and source of amalyse enzymes (your saliva has them if you're desperate) and yeast (open air is sufficient), you have alcohol. It takes a moderately equipped kitchen and a little bit of storage room and ingenuity, but it's an amazingly simple task.
Anyone with internet access should be able to sidestep this problem altogether. Manufacturing MDMA or Meth at least requires acquiring lab equipment and some fairly dangerous chemicals, plus some knowledge of chemistry, which is understandably above the abilities of some people. But any idiot can make booze.
MDMA is one of the safest drugs you can take. There are long term effects of taking high dosages regularly (to do with mood regulation), but a person using what they have verified to be actually MDMA in responsible doses faces the grave danger of loving everyone and everything for about 4 hours.
I'm not sure I would say Marijuana is a completely safe and harmless drug. The effects of the use are a lot less drastic than with other drugs, but regular and heavy users, in particular if they are young, are known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them. Some also develop mental illnesses.
That is probably a lot less drastic than the effects of e.g. getting completely drunk every day. But one of the problems is that there is no public evidence based knowledge about the effects of drugs like Marijuana. People either believe it's completely harmless, or they think it's the devil. There is also no good social canon on the use of such drugs. Getting drunk every day has obvious social stigma in all circles, but smoking hash every day can be accepted behaviour in certain circles.
That is actually the nice thing about this study, they try to correct this and give facts.
known get sluggish to the point where it becomes a huge problem for them... Some also develop mental illnesses.
Citations, please.
A phrase to remember when citing anecdotes about mentally ill people taking Drug X is self-medication. This is a technical term in counseling psychology; it refers to a very common phenomenon where a person who is suffering a mental health issue -- which can be anything from a mild acute depression to full-blown schizophrenia -- figures out, by trial and error, that taking a certain drug seems to alleviate their symptoms, or make those symptoms more tolerable. This often causes the patient to end up with two health problems, which can be difficult to sort out from each other and which generally must be treated together.
So even if you uncover evidence that mental illness and taking drugs are correlated, you can't simply assume that the drugs cause the mental illness. It could just as easily be the other way around.
"Longitudinal studies indicate that, in long-term, the higher use of cannabis is associated with an increased risk of developing bipolar disorder, and probably, major depression in subjects initially without affective disorder, but was not found increased risk of cannabis use among those initially only with mania or depression."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20658056
the source is not very reliable(some obscure journal in portugese),
This is why I will never vote for the legalization of MJ. Proponents will never admit that there are negative effects of the drug and when someone tries to mention it, they are immediately attacked and silenced.
A very small percentage of people are smoking it for health effects. The rest just want to forget about whatever is going on in their lives and get high. Why can't people just admit the truth?
I don't see how mechanical_fish was attacking Nitramp, and he most certainly did nothing to silence him. Could you explain what mechanical_fish did that was inappropriate?
I'm not a user of THC, but it doesn't help the debate when opponents spread huge amounts of misinformation and propaganda on the opposing side of the topic either, often citing debunked toxicity studies, and claiming false links to mental illness, none of which have been shown to be causative. Many of the dangers claimed are observations made from animal necroscopies after LD50 doses or doses non-representative of recreational or medical usage. Not joking, the LD50 of cannabis leaf for humans is roughly 3/4 of a ton, or something like 17lbs of pure THC.
I'm just curious, your opposition seems largely centered on people being high and not the medical effects, are you a prohibitionist too? What about self-induced altered states of mind, hypnosis, etc? Neurochemically active foods (chocolate->dopamine link)? What's the reasoning?
I don't have proper sources, nor am I an expert on the subject. I just remember this being the result of a study I read about some years ago, and it fits my personal experience with several friends.
Some Googling finds this: Pope HG, Gruber AJ, Hudson JI, Huestis MA, Yurgelun-Todd D. Neuropsychological performance in long-term cannabis users. Arch Gen Psychiatry 58(10):909–915, 2001.
Your caveat about correlation and self-medication could be right. It might also be wrong - you don't give a good citation either. My point was that I think we have a lot less knowledge about the effects of these drugs than e.g. alcohol which we're (ab-)using since millenia, so the UK analysis is certainly an improvement.
There is a difference between a glass of wine a day and getting drunk.
What's interesting there is that a glass of wine a day (which might be healthy, though such claims get regularly debunked) is socially accepted. I think our societies just have better knowledge of acceptable use of drugs that we're more familiar with, as a whole.
Nutt initially released this scale in 2009 and was sacked by the government over it
... and this in a moment of brilliance was dubbed the "Nutt Sack" by the UK press.
(I would have felt guilty making this the first comment in the thread last night, but now that there's lots of serious discussion surely someone ought to sneak it in.)
I can't find the most recent Lancet article mentioned in the article.
My concern with these rankings is that they don't seem to control for the number of people using the drug. Alcohol kills more people and has higher social costs largely because it's used by more people. However, for an individual user, crack or heroin is far more harmful than alcohol. So saying "alcohol is more harmful than heroin" might confuse some people. Also, if those drugs were legalized, their use might go up, thereby moving them higher up according to Nutt's rubric.
I would like to see a ranking that compares the damage these drugs do to an individual person. For instance, is it worse for your health to get intoxicated on a weekly basis with alcohol, or marijuana?
Also, if those drugs were legalized, their use might go up, thereby multiplying their negative impact on society.
Actually, all available evidence points to the fact that legalising drugs like heroin actually decreases their usage. Would you suddenly take up heroin if it was legal? Do you know anyone who would?
This may be one of the scales you're looking for, btw:
Also, worth pointing out, with respect to "amount of usage", that drugs like Ecstasy see millions of users every weekend... and yet only a handful of deaths per year (generally involving multiple drugs and/or several-days-long binges). A pretty sterling safety record, I'd say.
Actually, all available evidence points to the fact that legalising drugs like heroin actually decreases their usage. Would you suddenly take up heroin if it was legal? Do you know anyone who would?
I wouldn't use heroin if legal, but it's possible that the next generation, not being subject to mass anti-drug marketing campaigns, would use it in higher numbers.
The question is whether that matters, and that's a debate that's hard to have in an environment of politically motivated and emotionally charged scare campaigns.
Legalising doesn't mean the end of anti-... campaigns. You can still see a lot of "don't drink too much" / "don't drink and drive" / "drinking kills families" kind of stuff, even though drinking is perfectly legal.
Yes. I think nobody here argues that heroin should be legalized. But for lighter drugs legalization should clearly include ban on their advertisement (or, in fact, provision that tax revenue from their sale be spent on anti-advertisement)
Until you are breaking into somebody's house to get money to fund the addiction. Unfortunately, heroin is so addictive and so quick to build tolerance, that this is a very possible scenario.
The ideal scenario involves legalizing much more research about the drug so we could find a way to "have our cake and eat it, too." I imagine there are some smart scientists who could find a way to create a non-addictive heroin-like substance. As an example, just adding a small bit of naltrexone (an opioid antagonist) to opioids seems to reduce the build up of tolerance. I can't find the company who is doing clinical trials on a drug combining the two right now, but you can see [1] for an overview of combining an antagonist with an opioid.
Addiction and dependency are separate issue when dealing with drugs. I am physically dependent on opiates. When I was a child I was hit by a truck and bashed up pretty good. It pretty much ruined my neck. Anyway, in the absence of my medication I don't jump to the I need to commit a crime to get it nor would I. Addiction is a psychological phenomenon in which the user becomes consumed with the drug and will do anything to get it, it is a compulsive disorder and has nothing to do with the actual drug. If Alcohol where illegal an therefore prohibitively expensive you would see the same behavior among addictive personnel with Alcohol. Just because someone is physically dependent whether an abuser or not does not mean that they exhibit addictive personality traits.
I don't know about the legalization of Heroin, crack and Crystal Meth, I don't know enough about them to form a factual based opinion on their legalization, but I do believe without a doubt that Opium, Marijuana and Coca should be legalized immediately. The possession of a plant being illegal is ridiculous and the fear mongering around these weaker formed was unfounded in the first place.
But then the trouble is that you broke into someone's house, not that you were on heroin.
I think it'd be reasonable to make the penalty for crimes committed under the influence to be equivalent to conciously choosing to commit the crime. This seems to solve that issue to me.
I've known several heroin users and not one ever committed a crime to support their habit. As others have pointed out, penalize people for the crimes actually committed, not for what some people think they might do.
not even this study is arguing that heroin should be legalized, yet you do (and with a nonsensical argument like "it's my business")
it's quite safe to say that you can grow, produce and consume heroin for yourself pretty safely right now. it really is your business! until it's not, which is pretty fast.
Judging by already legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, the general trend in use has been downward for decades; for alcohol for over a century, except for Prohibition which caused an upward jiggle in the general trend. Before the first World War drunkeness was a major problem, and far more widespread than it is now.
Actually, all available evidence points to the fact that legalising drugs like heroin actually decreases their usage. Would you suddenly take up heroin if it was legal? Do you know anyone who would?
But then why is alcohol and tobacco use so prevalent, since those substances are legal? Did the number of drinkers decrease in the U.S. after Prohibition was lifted?
I also wonder if we would see the same sort of safety issues if, say, alcohol was banned but marijuana and cocaine were legalized (driving under the influence, violence--not with pot, I suppose)?
This is just my personal observation so take it for what it is worth, but as a former smoker. When I was a kid it seemed like everyone smoked, over time the stigma of being a smoker and the public awareness campaign has eroded that number. I finally quit when, at a party, I realized that I was the only person going outside to take smoke breaks.
Actually, all available evidence points to the fact that legalising drugs like heroin actually decreases their usage. Would you suddenly take up heroin if it was legal? Do you know anyone who would?
If marijuana were legal I might use it. Conversely, I don't think I know anyone who uses marijuana/heroin but would stop using it if it were legal.
I haven't seen the evidence either way; I just made the point in my original post as something to consider.
I /think/ the argument for legalisation lowering heroin use is that if it were legal, certain unscrupulous people would not be pushing it on fragile members of society, and getting them hooked for financial gain. If an addicted prostitute or other user could walk away from a pusher and life of crime and get the heroin on prescription (with an eye to coming off it in the long term), then the thought is that use and dealing would go down. (Why don't users now just go an get methadone/other substitute - I've read that is because they are pretty awful replacements).
I /think/ the argument for legalisation lowering heroin use is that if it were legal, certain unscrupulous people would not be pushing it on fragile members of society, and getting them hooked for financial gain.
Replace "heroin" with "cigarettes" and you have a one-sentence description of tobacco companies. Legalizing it won't get rid of pushing, so long as pushing is financially beneficial for the pusher.
Yes - if cigarettes were available on prescription, it would massively harm the abilities of cigarette companies to market and advertise (since profits would be hit rather hard!) which in turn would cut out a whole new tranche of smokers.
Come on, making heroin "as legal as" tobacco is a straw man. Even the Netherlands, well-known for their liberal drug policy, have rather severe restrictions even on marijuana use.
I smoke, since I was young, it was silly, but I'd seen others do it and was offered cigarettes from a buddy and got hooked.
Thinking about it, the only reason I would never try heroin now, is I've seen what it can do to people, from movies mostly (ironically ones that are not suitable for children to watch).
If heroin was legal, I think kids who have no idea what the hell they're getting into would be the ones to be affected.
So you're right, most adults wouldn't take up heroin if it suddenly became legal - but I bet a lot of kids would.
only reason I would never try heroin now, is I've seen what it can do to people, from movies mostly
Are you seen you have seen that? From what I read, part of the reason heroin addicts look the way they do is that they do not buy enough food because they use all their money on heroin; they use all their money on heroin because it is so expensive, and it is so expensive because it is illegal.
Another reason is loss of appetite due to heroin addiction, but that certainly is not the only reason, and looking at programs where the government provides heroin to selected addicts, it does not appear to be the most important one.
Also, if those drugs were legalized, their use might go up, thereby multiplying their negative impact on society.
It's possible that the number of people trying a drug might go up, but there are a number of desirable benefits to drugs being legal:
- the quality is controlled, so you know you're not snorting bleach. This reduces user harm immensely right off the bat.
- the cost of the drug can be taxed, which would give the government money to invest in treatment programs for problem users. Even if you're generally anti-taxation it's difficult to argue that the profits of the drug trade are better off with the people who currently receive them, who are generally some of the more unpleasant people on the planet.
- societies are free to treat problematic drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. US jails have an extremely high number of inmates who are there for relatively minor drug infractions due to e.g. three-strike policies. This is expensive for the state and they probably come out more likely to commit serious crime than when they went in. There's a lot of evidence (apart from just plain common sense) that being able to treat drug abuse with theraputic techniques is much more effective than punishment (see Portugal, for example).
Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.
"Crack cocaine is more addictive than alcohol but because alcohol is so widely used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and those people will go to extraordinary lengths to get it."
By that logic it's also more harmful to drive a car than to cut open your chest, pull out your heart and eat it?
The point of the study is the government should address drugs based on the problems they do represent, not on the problems they might perhaps theoretically some day represent.
Alcohol and tobacco do kill tens of thousands of people every year. Ecstasy and LSD and Cannabis kill maybe a dozen people every year all together, and usually in combination with other drugs. Yet there are considerably fewer resources allocated to fighting alcohol and tobacco use than the latter.
That said, the chemicals themselves are unlikely to cause death. This, obviously, is not the same as "will definitely not have any unpleasant consequence".
"Coroner: Aragon High School student took LSD before falling to death in Canada"
10/23/2010 12:01:00 AM PDT
"A 17-year-old Aragon High School student was under the influence of LSD when he plunged to his death during a trip to Canada in June with teachers and fellow classmates, according to a British Columbia coroner's report.
"Daniel Cho and two friends took the drug while they were on a bus headed from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, according to the coroner. The boys were with more than 100 other Aragon students headed to Canada as part of a musical exchange program.
"When the group made a stop at a popular tourist spot called the Capilano Suspension Bridge on the evening of June 6, Cho climbed over a 4-foot-high fence and fell 100 feet into a ravine below.
"The coroner has ruled his death an accident, and Canadian police won't file any criminal charges in connection with the case."
The burden of responsibility is on the person claiming that it is responsible for death. LSD, the substance, has not killed anyone. Someone is welcome to disprove this.
The effects of LSD, the substance, certainly have.
The substance itself does not cause an "overdose" and the same is true of cannabis (at least for any ingestible amount), but it would be disingenuous to claim they have not caused deaths.
No, the burden of responsibility is on people not to say stuff that's trivially disproven with a simple Google search. Though I'm guessing most HN commenters already know the story of Frank Olsen without even having to do one.
How many injuries and/or deaths are caused by car crashes in a year? And how many by people eating their own heart? OK, so, now you've got a billion pounds to spend on a marketing campaign, are you going to target driving or heart-eating?
I agree that the issues which affect more people should be a bigger focus from the government. I don't, however, think they should be called "more harmful".
More harmful to society as a whole. Not more harmful to the affected individuals.
Blame BBC for an ambiguous headline.
The conclusion of the study should be that the government should spend more effort fighting alcoholism than LSD abuse. Most likely, it already does. The conclusion should not be that young people should start experimenting with LSD instead of alcohol.
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), which Nutt used, is a tool for decision making, not something "sophisticated" to generate scientific evidence! It cannot estimate a drug's harm. Alcohol is wide-spread and deserves a discussion for that reason alone, but Nutt is not presenting "evidence" or anything new. MCDA is heavily prone to selection bias in picking criteria and weights. It is an extremely subjective process and is used when two or more decisions closely compete to give some pseudo-quantitative separation. When you structure the problem in which one alternative scores very high, the analysis didn't add a single ounce of value.
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), which Nutt used, is a tool for decision making, not something "sophisticated" to generate scientific evidence!
I have not read the papper, but informing public policy ("decision making") seems to be what this study is trying to do.
I'm not sure what you mean by "informing public policy", but if the paper was to inform, they would provide summary of facts and facts only. The paper says it is trying to estimate drug harms using some set of arbitrary "harm parameters". I am saying you can't objectively estimate harms with an MCDA analysis. You're not going to get anything objective out of this unless you're framing it against an exact set of decisions you have to make. All you're going to do is find one group's interpretation. Although MCDA is systematic, and a lot of it including the ranking is generated automagically once you have everything set, overlaid with some "sophisticated" (Nutt's words in the interview) overtones, it is entirely subjective.
If you wanted, I could give you an MCDA showing cocaine is more harmful to society just by tweaking a few criteria a tiny bit. I could add a practicality criteria in that drinking alcohol is a cultural practice in many places, or I can separate two forms of drinking, responsible drinking and irresponsible drinking. There are so many ways to slice it that if you don't have specific decisions you're evaluating against, the whole analysis is useless.
I love it how you're being downvoted (your excellent comment pointing out the flaw in this study was at the top initially) without a single refutation!
Speaks a lot about the values of this community and the karma system!
Just a heads up: there is a bit of politics with this story. The author was the head of the government advisory board that suggested changing the ratings (and thus penalties) of some drugs, but the subject was too dangerous to tackle politically. He criticised the government and got fired. A year later he publishes this report.
The Guardian's coverage ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/01/alcohol-more-h... ) knows that this report is likely to be attacked politically (regardless of merit) so it's no surprise they are using adjectives to cut off this attack. Note their use of words like "authoritative" and "respected" early in the article.
This describes pretty concisely how governments might choose to use or not use evidence about drug harm and the reasons for doing so:
Drugs instantiate the classic problem for evidence based social policy. It may well be that prohibition, and the inevitable distribution of drugs by criminals, gives worse results for all the outcomes we think are important, like harm to the user, harm to our communities through crime, and so on. But equally, it may well be that we will tolerate these worse outcomes, because we decide it is somehow more important that we publicly declare ourselves, as a culture, to be disapproving of drug use, and enshrine that principle in law. It’s okay to do that. You can have policies that go against your stated outcomes, for moral or political reasons: but that doesn’t mean you can hide the evidence, it simply means you must be clear that you don’t care about it.
"Specifically, alcohol-related fatalities declined significantly in 2004, to 16,694, the second consecutive year in which alcohol-related fatalities declined."
In terms of lethal dose they would be safer. By the author's scale they are safer.
Premature death would be a difficult one to study - as I don't know if there are as many regular users of shrooms/lsd as there are with steroids/tobacco.
There is no chance that this chart is accurate for the US. Crack and heroin are together directly responsible for a ridiculously high percentage of gang violence and other inner-city problems, and crystal meth has destroyed many small rural towns throughout the south and midwest.
More explanation of their methodology would be nice, especially given their use of data from the Netherlands, which has a very progressive drug policy.
Drug-related gang violence isn't caused by drug use, it's caused by drug policy. Changing the policy so that it no longer creates ridiculously huge profit opportunities around the drugs in question does make the problems go away.
I completely acknowledge the importance of policy, hence the mention of the Netherlands progressiveness in the area. Explain how you measure the social impact of a drug without also measuring the social impact of the policy around the drug (or how the study in question did it), and you've answered my question.
This argument drives me crazy. You think the drug pushers are gonna say "ah shucks. no more profit in drugs. guess I better go to college and get a real job."
Trust me, they will find something else to exploit. Kidnapping in Bogota comes to mind. Crime won't go down.
Probably many would find something else, and that's a problem - but surely it can't be used as justification for not changing the policies.
Legalization should happen gradually and with some kind of amnesty outreach program. But even if not: Crime like robbery would likely spike, but unless gangs quickly find a replacement product that's in similarly high demand (if there was one, wouldn't they already be serving it?) I imagine cutting off their easiest source of income would fairly quickly reduce their power to attract new members, purchase weapons, etc.
This was on the news this morning complete with stock footage of adults drinking socially in the pub - but the problems with alcohol are around ultra-cheap alcohol bought in supermarkets.
I haven't followed it, but he seems to be trying to open up the debate.
Prohibition didn't work out too well, but anti-smoking campaigns in many countries seem to be somewhat effective. So a gentler approach just may work, if you're willing to accept that it probably takes a century before you can ban the substance.
Gentler approach? Anti-smoking is reaching prohibition like levels in most countries. You're banned from smoking everywhere to the point you're banned from smoking in your own vehicle if someone else is present regardless of whether or not the passengers smoke themselves.
IIRC here in Canada it's illegal to smoke in a work vehicle, it's illegal to smoke in your own vehicle if you have a passenger under 18. You can't smoke within X-feet of a building entrance. They're trying to make it illegal to smoke in your own home if you have anyone under 18 living there.
I really don't see this as a gentle approach. I'm a non-smoker, I don't give a crap where people smoke and I see this illegalization of smoking to be severely harmful to our society. Given the link between certain genes and smoking, why not make autism illegal? I mean it's harmful to the users and is harmful to society by costing us billions in unearned wages and medical costs.
I'm sick of this nanny state bullshit. At the rate governments are regressing, we will be at full prohibition before we ever see marijuana or LSD legalized.
Yes, it's a lot gentler. The anti-smoking movement has been going on for a long time, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-smoking_movement. If my "one century" estimate is correct, smoking will be more-or-less banned in progressive countries between 2040 and 2075; the high end of that range does not seem totally unreasonable, although I'm not an expert by any means.
Contrast prohibition in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_State...): the first thing most people noticed was probably a complete ban (1920), although there were already quite a few local bans in place by that point (equally abruptly introduced). Very little effort seems to have been spent on gradual introduction of the law, and it was introduced despite a lack of broad acceptance (contrast the "conditional bans" you complain about.)
It may well be the case that the anti-smokers will, like the "dry" people, eventually achieve a ban on the good in question. However, the anti-tobacco campaign is a lot more gentle than the anti-alcohol campaign, and denying that is just rhetoric.
Two notes: yes, I think an eventual tobacco ban is a good thing; and you may be amused to learn that the nazis were fiercely anti-smoking as well.
People have been sick of smoke for years. It was never sustainable that a minority should be allowed pollute the environment of everyone else. Any politician who campaigned to bring back smoking in these places would fail spectacularly. Get used to it.
OTOH you have to keep in mind these movements are organized by a few people, and not the entire society suddenly rising against the evils of passive smoking.
At least in the Netherlands, in my social circle, anti-smoking laws are very welcome. Like any issue, it's championed by a few people; and yes, there are people who oppose it. But as far as I can see, there's quite a bit of acceptance, both by non-smokers and smokers.
I would argue that smoke is, by definition, a pollution of the environment, even for smokers. So I should have omitted the 'else' and just left it at 'everyone'. If people knowingly volunteer to expose themselves to it then it should be their right but they do not have the right to impose it on anyone else.
Given the link between certain genes and smoking, why not
make autism illegal?
All that you listed is to protect others from your smoke — which I very welcome. I don't see how the analogy with autism holds there. And even if you have genes which just force you to smoke, please do so that others who don't posses these genes are not forced to breath your medicine.
Right people have the right to be free from smoke and smokers have the right to smoke. Each group need to respect the right of the other, the problem in this case is neither do. The anti-smokers want smoking eliminated all together and to deny smokers their pleasures while the smokers feel they should be able to foist the by-product of their pleasure on others.
The one that I differ with the anti-smokers on is bars. These are institutions with the explicit purpose of pleasure. I think owner of the establishment should be allowed to decide if his establishment is designated smoking or non. The anti-smokers don't like this because the vote would be a resounding we are a smoking establishment. Because for a good deal of the population, they don't care, they would go to a smoking bar. The non-smokers activist hate this because no one want's to hang out at their non-smoking bar. So they ruin it for the rest. In my state Bars where the last public establishments to fall and they fought hard to resist it because patrons had already voted with their feet and smoking bars where more popular than non.
Can you read? Or do you see one piece of a larger argument and go completely blind?
As I said I am a _non-smoker_. I have been for my entire life. Again as I already said I do not care that people smoke around me and I find it a huge inconvenience on myself that I have to go out of my way to be with my friends when the laws are getting restrictive to the point that you cannot smoke anywhere legally in downtown areas except in the middle of a boulevard.
Yet I can't go downtown on a Saturday night without running into drunks and druggies who get into fights and destroy property. I've seen chairs thrown into oncoming traffic by people refused alcohol, I don't see this from any smokers anywhere?
Please cut the fucking naivety here. Alcohol is more destructive to the users health and to our societal health than tobacco, marijuana or LSD, but we're happy with the former being legal while the latter society wants illegal.
"Members of the group, joined by two other experts, scored each drug for harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities."
In my opinion with this dataset you can only have conclusions about the experts opinion/experiences.
If you're measuring harm to the communities, shouldn't you be taking polls at the communities?
I'm questioning the fact that these experts (doctors? sociologists?) just scored which drugs they found more dangerous. For starters, effects in the individual and in the community belongs to two completely different areas of expertise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt: "David J. Nutt is a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs which affect the brain and conditions such as addiction, anxiety and sleep."
Dr. Les King is a well-respected chemist; I'll let you dig up your own references. Dr. Phillips is specialized in decision procedures and policy-making.
Yes, it would make sense to have others look over their conclusions, and yes, at least Nutt and Les King are not sociologists. But both have a long service on various boards on the topic of substance abuse - do you really believe they have no idea what they are talking about, medically or sociologically? Do you really think the Lancet wants to get caught publishing highly controversial rubbish ("link bait")?
And all of this is still just a smokescreen - you don't like their conclusions, fine, but then you'll have to point out that they're actually wrong. Calling their authority into question is disingenuous (especially since they have plenty of authority). Their facts may be incorrect, and there is definitely some subjectivity here (how do weigh damage to self in an individualistic welfare state?), but you'll have to offer better arguments than this.
Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. The fact that they are well-credentialed does not excuse the fact that the study in question just flat-out isn't science. It's not reproducible without getting the same group back in a room together, it's based on subjective opinion or subjective interpretation of objective data, and it compares legal substances to illegal substances without offering a principled way to control for the effects of that regulation.
Do you really think the Lancet wants to get caught publishing highly controversial rubbish ("link bait")?
Um, The Lancet frequently publishes controversial articles. They published (and later retracted) a paper that claimed a link between vaccines and autism, they put out one of the highest death-toll estimates of the Iraq War, and they've called for a complete ban on tobacco products in the UK, to name a few.
Yes, but the comment I replied to was questioning their credentials, which is at equally invalid - more so, in this case, since they actually do have quite impressive credentials.
With respect to The Lancet: controversy sells, but you still want to have a credible argument.
You are right, though, that this isn't exactly objective and independent of current policy. Then again, it may be hard to get such data...
How so? In the sense that the smoker is all messed up in the hospital bringing pain to his relatives, sure.
But I don't think people sell their mom's furniture to buy marlboro, and haven't seen moms chaining their kids to their beds to stop them from going out smoking.
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'destroyed', then. Personally, any kid of mine who I would consider chaining to a bed would be in rehab without a second thought -- on the other hand, smoking seems so innocuous that before you know it they're dying of lung cancer and you can't do anything about it...
They aren't really comparable, if you ask me -- I get your point. All I'm saying is that some people can recreationally use all kinds of drugs (alcohol, meth, crack, whatever) and others can't. Smoking will just straight up kill you. So IMO, in terms of 'damage to society' smoking is way further up there than most illegal drugs.
Possibly, and the ld50 of beer is definitely higher than that of vodka. What are you trying to say? I don't think the amount ingested is very interesting here...
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article68947...
Several other members of the drugs advisory board resigned in protest. It's a typical case of the government asking scientists to come up with evidence and then refusing to see the evidence when it is presented. "You got us the wrong evidence! Get us another truth!"
At the bottom of this article, you can find the suggested classifcation by harm:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6474053.stm
Of course, the point is not to ban alcohol, but to have a more mature debate about drugs (and possibly to unban relatively harmless drugs such as LSD, Ecstasy, Cannabis...)