Alcohol Considered More Dangerous Than Heroine

In in a report published in the UK in the medical journal the Lancet, alcohol is considered more harmful than heroine or crack cocaine. The report is co-authored by Prof. David Nutt and Dr. Les King.

Prof. Nutt is the former UK chief drugs adviser who was dismissed by the government in October 2009 because of his outspoken views when he compared the use of banned substances to other social activities such as horse riding.

The new report ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to society in general. Cocaine and tobacco are considered equally harmful while ecstasy and LSD are considered the least damaging.

After being dismissed from his position with the government Nott formed the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs whose aim is to investigate drugs without any interference from politicians. Dr. King, another committee member was another government adviser who resigned because of the government’s treatment of Prof Nutt.

Each of the 20 drugs was rated for harms including physical and mental damage, addiction, related crime and cost to the community and economy. To conduct these tests members of the group were joined by two outside experts.

After the tests were completed it was concluded that heroin, crack cocaine and methylamphetamine were the most harmful drugs to individuals and that heroine, crack cocaine and alcohol were the most harmful to others. When the scores for both types of harm were totaled up alcohol was shown to be the most harmful drug followed by heroine and crack.

The results are quite different to the UK governments long established drug classification system. However the report’s authors suggests that their system, based on the experts assessments, provides a better assessment of harm for use by government policymakers.

“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,” the report says.
“They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy.”

It was Prof. Nutt’s attempt to create a harm ranking system that led to his dismissal by the UK home Sec. Allen Johnson in October 2009. At the time, Johnson wrote in the Guardian newspaper, “He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy. As for his comments about horse riding being more dangerous than ecstasy, it is of course a political rather than a scientific point.”