A Scientifically compiled Ranking of Drugs
From the Globe: The top drug adviser for the UK, Dr. David Nutt, who was fired in October for stating in a lecture, that "alcohol is more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the UK might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana smokers in jail". His comments are based on a scientifically ranking of drugs from experts in chemistry, health and enforcement, which was already published in a prestigious medical journal two years earlier.
The graph that they refer to.. I can't cut and paste on the blog. If you wish to see it, you may be able to get at it from, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/13/you_cant_handle_the_truth/?page=1
The British study compared the harmfulness of 20 substances, rating physical harm, risk of dependency and social costs. The short of the graph is that Heroin is the top ranked hazardous drug, followed by cocaine, barbiturates, street methadone, ALCOHOL, ketamine, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, TOBACCO, buprenorphine, CANNABIS, solvents, 4-MTA, LSD, methylphenidate, anabolic steroids, GHB, ecstasy, alkyl nitrites, khat.
The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title “Mean Harm Scores for 20 Substances,” ranked a set of common drugs, both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness of different substances.
That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for saying out loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking, and LSD is less damaging yet.
British law allows up to five years imprisonment for marijuana possession, a penalty Nutt called “infantile and embarrassing.” McLellan, the White House drug adviser, echoed him, saying jailing pot smokers “is idiocy, a really bad use of resources.”
This type of honest, scientifically based information will be shunned by the drug warriors, but anyone who has witnessed drunks in the past would know, alcohol abuse is doing more damage to society, than pot would ever do. And now... for the first time since the early days of the start of the war on marijuana, our government is taking steps to end it.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 2:30 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Pretty interesting, but if they guy who wrote it got fired for writing it, doesn’t that call into question what he has to say?
Is alchohol more dangerous because more people have access to it or is it more dangerous because of the damage it does to your body. Those are 2 pretty different scenarios. Which is the case here Jim?
I like what you do here Pillsbury but in these times you should recognize that there are much more important things to be worried about than pot regulations don’t you think?
Jamie.. he was fired for airing the study in public, which calls into question his governments actions. Often times in life, people get fired for telling the truth.
JJ.. the report is based on the harm factor. Alcohol has since prohibition ended been socially accepted with no regard to it's health effects.
JG.. right you are.. .there are dozens of very important things to work on and worry about.... but just consider:
Over 13 million people in the US have been wounded in the war on cannabis. Over 700,000 people a year get bagged, with 60% for just possession. Our civil liberties have been reduced since the Nixon years, our prisons are overflowing, people loose their jobs over a drug test for pot and we've spent over 1 TRILLION dollars in this futile attempt at stopping a plant from being used, namely hemp.
In the late 90's an administrative judge ruled that marijuana did not pose any threat to society, but his decision was overruled with propaganda and not science.
We have all argued for decades to show us proof that pot kills people, makes people lazy, ruins brain cells, makes black people rape white women, on and on and on... and they could only refer back to unsubstantiated government sponsored studies that did not pass peer review.
While none of us will ever have any effect on what foreign war we send our kids off to, here at home, this domestic war has got to end.
Nice response Pillsbury. Obviously pot smoking did not damage your brain cells.
AV... I've battled almost my entire adult life against the stigma of cannabis use and the use of hemp. History and now science shows that it's wrong to prosecute millions of people like myself, just to keep hemp from competing with the chemical companies.
invest in cannabisscience.com
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