Drug Study Published in UK "Lancet"

LONDON — New “landmark” research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Prof. Nutt and his colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts — psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise — to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD.

Prof. Nutt and his colleagues then calculated the drugs' overall rankings. In the end, the experts agreed with each other — but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.

Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.

According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.

“The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary,” said Prof. Nutt, referring to the United Kingdom's practice of assigning drugs to three distinct divisions, ostensibly based on the drugs' potential for harm. “The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary,” write Prof. Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet.

Full Article

A couple of points:
1) Cannabis is medicine, good medicine, for a lot of human ailments. It's not for everyone! But properly used, it can help an alcoholic stay off the booze, for example, or mitigate an MS sufferer's symptoms, or help a depressive smile, or bring a terminal cancer patient's appetite back.
2) The "bad effects" of cannabis are ALL due to its continuing illegality. If it were legal, the criminal grow-ops would DISAPPEAR and be replaced by a regulated ag industry. Most people would grow their own in their own gardens, I think, but the mad geniuses would still produce ever better varieties, and there would still be a specialty market for the latest and best strains.
3) There is a lot of informal research being done on medicinal cannabis - but more scientific study is necessary. Unfortunately, the DEA in the US of A will not approve ANY studies, and the pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in STOPPING studies of a drug which anyone can grow in their yard.

The gorilla in the room, unfortunately, is the increasingly oppressive policies of the US federal government, and their self-righteous application of extra-territoriality for their police state mentality. Canadian governments oppose the bully next door at their peril. Mr. Harper's mini-me to GW is one approach; Mr Chretien's passive resistance is another. (say what you like about Chretien - he kept Canada out of Iraq. Good for him! Harper thought invading Iraq was a good idea!). But the reality is that if the Canadian government took any steps to legalizing cannabis, it would create a very tense situation with the US feds. My own opinion is that we should legalize cannabis - but how many Canadian politicians have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to an isolated, wounded, but very powerful and mean neighbour?