Experts: Alcohol More Harmful Than Crack or Heroin
Substance Abuse Ranked According to Harm to User and Society
By Tim Locke
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
Nov. 1, 2010 -- Alcohol abuse is more harmful than crack or heroin abuse, according to a new study by a former British government drug advisor and other experts.
Neuropharmacologist David Nutt, MD, of Imperial College London, and colleagues rated 20 different drugs on a scale that takes into account the various harms caused by a drug. Drugs are rated on nine harms a drug causes an individual and seven harms a drug causes society.
The scale, developed by a panel of experts called the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ICSD), ranges from 0 (no harm) to 100 (greatest possible harm). It is weighted so that a drug that scores 50 is half as harmful as a drug that scores 100.
"The highest and lowest overall harm scores … are 72 for alcohol and 5 for mushrooms," Nutt and colleagues calculate. "The ICSD scores lend support to the widely accepted view that alcohol is an extremely harmful drug both to users and to society."
(More here.)
By Tim Locke
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
Nov. 1, 2010 -- Alcohol abuse is more harmful than crack or heroin abuse, according to a new study by a former British government drug advisor and other experts.
Neuropharmacologist David Nutt, MD, of Imperial College London, and colleagues rated 20 different drugs on a scale that takes into account the various harms caused by a drug. Drugs are rated on nine harms a drug causes an individual and seven harms a drug causes society.
The scale, developed by a panel of experts called the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ICSD), ranges from 0 (no harm) to 100 (greatest possible harm). It is weighted so that a drug that scores 50 is half as harmful as a drug that scores 100.
"The highest and lowest overall harm scores … are 72 for alcohol and 5 for mushrooms," Nutt and colleagues calculate. "The ICSD scores lend support to the widely accepted view that alcohol is an extremely harmful drug both to users and to society."
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
Well, what the hell - bottoms up!
The question is whether harm inflicted on an individual can be compared to harm inflicted on the society. I think that an alcohol addict poses a threat much more serious than a person addicted to crack or heroine. Alcohol is often the root cause of numerous car accidents often involving innocent people. Ruining your own health is always terrible but causing trouble to other people as a result of your irresponsible behaviour is unacceptable.
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