Alcohol Is The Most Dangerous Drug

[JaredJames]

I don't know any specific numbers not even a rough idea of the percentages, so i can't conclude from the small group of people i met or heard about how it should be regulated,, but that tells us that it shouldn't be black or white laws or "culture" might target the specific variables in the process.

for example we might have more control over what types of drugs are taken the culture and environment in which it is taken, the dosage etc.. so that we don't end up doing more harm than we set out to prevent

drugs are extremely diverse, people are extremely diverse, war on drugs has some goods and some harms because (as far as i can tell) it doesn't take into account the finer details of the problem (it's a war!),, i think in this situation we must be more flexible and creative about it.

Ever heard of "give them an inch and they take a mile"?

I do agree that there are situations where law can be an issue in that they aren't always black and white cases. However, it you start making allowances for *some* cases, you face creating a blurryness which can cause even more legal issues.

You have a large number of alcohol drinkers and then a minority within that group which cause problems (whether to the police, healthcare system or otherwise). You have a *smaller* number of drug users, but there is (based on what I have seen) a significant portion of this group causing problems (drug related crime etc).
Some drugs are so addictive people will do anything to get their next fix (alcohol included). I think weighing up the whole "how likely is a person to cause a problem" whilst requiring the effects of said drug should be brought into it.

 

[BobG]

The prevalence of alcohol use is due to the pervasive desire to alter one's cognitive experience (in some fashion). If Alcohol were illegal, not all alcohol users would return to alcohol; instead, most would simply identify the most readily accessible drug and use that.

If it's not alcohol, it'll be marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or meth.

What is the percentage of 'successful' drug users who you could say the drugs didn't ruin their lives, to drug users who have cleary had their lives ruined by drugs?

I have no doubt some people can live normal lives and still utilise the drugs, but unless there is a significant number (if not a high majority) that are like this then I don't think it makes a difference.
An extremely large number of people drink alcohol, but the number of people within this group whose lives are ruined by it is nowhere near that large. However, if you take heroin for example, how many people take it and how many people's lives are subsequently ruined? (The above paragraph refers mainly to regular useage).
I don't have numbers and would like to see some, but I think this may be one of the major points when it comes to drugs and why they are banned.

Both of these posts make some good points.

1) Is there a static market for intoxication (by some means or other) that's unaffected by drug laws? If there is, then making a drug such as marijuana illegal has no real effect. It's just directing consumers towards some specific drug.

The fact that there is still a market for marijuana, cocaine, etc shows that at least a small portion of the population is so picky about their means of intoxication that they'd choose an illegal drug over a legal drug...

... or it shows that a portion of the intoxication market doesn't care about laws. I think the latter is the case. The people using illegal drugs are more likely to abuse whatever drug they take, regardless of whether it's alcohol or some other drug. Their choice of an illegal drug shows they aren't nearly as concerned about the consequences of their actions as they are about intoxication.

That means a study would be flawed. Is it the drugs that are more likely to ruin a person's life or are people more likely to ruin their lives also more likely to choose illegal drugs.

Legalizing marijuana would bring in some extra tax revenue, but not some overwhelming tide of new tax revenue that would transform government budgets. At some point, a rise in marijuana usage would merely cut into alcohol usage.

2) There is no static intoxication market. Laws making all drugs, including alcohol, illegal would reduce intoxication among the populace. Likewise, legalizing marijuana or other drugs would increase intoxication among the populace.

I think the second model is more realistic. To cut alcohol consumption to 30%, or even 60% of previous levels (or whatever the actual reduction was during prohibition since making alcohol illegal had the side effect of making consumption very difficult to measure) means you're cutting the number of customers even more drastically. Cutting out the 30% of users that use alcohol infrequently doesn't cut alcohol consumption by 30%. Very frequent users consume more alcohol per person than infrequent users.

Cutting out a huge chunk of non-problem drinkers, the drinkers most likely to be influenced by an alcohol prohibition, would mean a higher percentage of those who still consumed alcohol would have their lives ruined by it.

Short term, cutting alcohol consumption by even drastic levels doesn't eliminate the problems caused by alcohol. Instead alcohol use just becomes limited to those most likely to ruin their lives and cause problems to the rest of society.

3) Regardless of short term effects, what effect does a multi-generational prohibition on alcohol (and all other drugs) have? If people were not inundated with beer commercials brainwashing them to see intoxication as the means to becoming the most popular person at the party, how prevalent would alcohol abuse be? In other words, why did it take a decade for alcohol consumption to rise back to previous levels once prohibition was repealed?

This is something that would cut across all lines, especially if the tendency to drink uncontrollably is chemically related - i.e. some people's chemical interaction makes it impossible to control their drinking once they've started. In other words, not just the people that use alcohol every day, but the binge drinker that may not drink often, but drinks badly almost every time they do drink.

There are many people that are competent socially, in that they do follow laws, pursue good careers, etc, but physically can't handle alcohol and wouldn't have become problem users if not exposed to it in the first place (and most absolutely refuse to admit they can't control their use through willpower since they're successful at most of the other things they do).

In this case, prohibition would actually reduce alcohol abuse and the cost to society of alcohol abuse, but not eliminate it. It doesn't eliminate abuse of illegal drugs even with a legal alternative available, so it would be naive to expect prohibition to eliminate alcohol abuse. That would create a scenario where one would have to evaluate whether the reduction was significant enough to make it worth it - something that would be hard to do in advance.

4) Or is alcohol a drug that would be better treated the same way society treats tobacco use? Put severe restrictions on advertising (no more TV beer commercials, for example), put severe restrictions on where it can be used, sue alcohol manufacturers for huge sums of money that theoretically go to the state to reduce alcohol abuse, etc, and hope it eventually has a long term effect on alcohol abuse.

 

[lisab]

Here's a graphic from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm

 

[Upisoft]

Interesting. Heroin and Crack cocaine are very close to Alcohol, despite the fact they are much harder to obtain.

 

[chaoseverlasting]

If you have spent much time with people who use drugs other than alcohol (and as a musician, I have run into quite a few), you may have a view of the drug-users that is not really congruent with our media's perceptions, or our government's policies.

Funny that you should mention this. Just today I met a friend of mine who's a brilliant blues musician. We had a debate on drugs as he's a habitual marijuana user but doesn't drink alcohol. As far as everything else in his life is concerned, its almost enviable. He's at the top of his class in law, socially sound and generally stable. Also, he's far less violent (or at the very least has displayed less aggressive behaviour) than a lot of the other guys I know. In fact, most of the aggression that I've witnessed has been in some way related to alcohol. I can't recall a single instance of a stoner picking a fight.

 

[BobG]

Going by that chart, we should make alcohol illegal and legalize meth - based on the premise that what a person does to themselves is their own business; the harm they cause to others is everybody's business. (In fact, when meth was first introduced to legal markets, it was a treatment for chronic alcoholism.)

Of course, there's only http://www.drugaddictionnews.com/29/meth-addiction/ compared to 145 million alcohol users, so I guess you'd have to multiply the adverse effects of meth by about 100 if it were to replace alcohol.

 

[Gokul43201]

Interesting. Heroin and Crack cocaine are very close to Alcohol, despite the fact they are much harder to obtain.

Is it interesting? Are you going just by the figure in the post or have you read the paper itself? What exactly does the x-axis represent?

For instance, if the x-axis measure involved some kind of normalization of "total harm" with respect to the number of consumers (thereby making the "hard to obtain" factor essentially irrelevant), then the graph may be interesting for the completely opposite reason than if it were not.

It would be nice if someone who has read the paper could briefly explain the calculation.

 

[Upisoft]

Going by that chart, we should make alcohol illegal and legalize meth - based on the premise that what a person does to themselves is their own business; the harm they cause to others is everybody's business.

No 'shrooms are better option. Everybody will experience Santa first hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbfKub6xSKY

 

[Upisoft]

Is it interesting? Are you going just by the figure in the post or have you read the paper itself? What exactly does the x-axis represent?

For instance, if the x-axis measure involved some kind of normalization of "total harm" with respect to the number of consumers (thereby making the "hard to obtain" factor essentially irrelevant), then the graph may be interesting for the completely opposite reason than if it were not.

It would be nice if someone who has read the paper could briefly explain the calculation.

It is explained in the linked article. No reference to any scientific paper is available. One can think it is a brainwashing propaganda.

 

[Evo]

Here is the graph from the Op's article about the study in the Lancet.

The actual study shows heroine as the most harmful, followed by cocaine, barbiturates, and street methadone.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607604644/images?imageId=gr1&sectionType=green

[PLAIN]http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5981/drugsu.jpg

 

[NobodySpecial]

"mean score from independant experts" then averaged to a spurious number of decimal places looks suspicious to me.

Did they each just check a box on a form from, 5=the most dangerous to 1=the least dangerous or is there an SI unit of dangerousness of drugs that each 'expert' measured in a carefully controlled experiment?

 

[Evo]

The full article here. Registration is free.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60464-4/fulltext

I haven't read the original article (only the news), but I can't see the value in comparing the cost to society of illegal and legal substances (alcohol vs meth, for example). The simple fact of the difference in their legal status implies the means of distribution and consumption are likely to be so different that it is silly to draw comparisons from aggregates.

And adding the cost to self with the cost to society to produce a "total" cost is even more meaningless.

That's exactly what they did.

 

[Gokul43201]

It is explained in the linked article.

Not well enough for me. This is all it says:

Researchers led by Professor David Nutt, a former chief drugs adviser to the British government, asked drug-harm experts to rank 20 drugs (legal and illegal) on 16 measures of harm to the user and to wider society, such as damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs and crime.​

That doesn't tell me anything about how the scale actually works.

If X is a drug that instantly kills all 5000 of its consumers each year, and Y is a drug that instantly kills 50% of its 10,000 annual consumers, what would their scores be (assuming all their other costs are negligible). If Z kills 1% of its first-hand consumers, and 0.1% of unintentional second-hand affectees, what is Z's scores on each of the two scales (harm to users, harm to others)?

 

[BobG]

A link to the original 2007 study: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n366/a01.html

I think there's a little confusion as to which study is which.

Nutt did the original 2007 study based primarily on the harm to the user. (This is the study one can easily access.)

That study was criticized since it ignored harm to others.

The study was also criticized for failing to weight any of the categories. For example, addictiveness is one of the 9 categories. Should high addictivity be rated the same as high immediate physical damage? (But the study was intended to provide data to make decisions, not to actually provide decisions; in which case, providing rankings was a little counter productive.)

Nutt released a new study in the last few days that updated the original study with 7 new categories to measure harm to others.

This article (Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack') at least implies indirectly that the number of users figured into the new added categories, but the new study is the article that's hard to gain access to.

 

[Evo]

A link to the original 2007 study: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n366/a01.html

I think there's a little confusion as to which study is which.

Nutt did the original 2007 study based primarily on the harm to the user. (This is the study one can easily access.)

That study was criticized since it ignored harm to others.

The study was also criticized for failing to weight any of the categories. For example, addictiveness is one of the 9 categories. Should high addictivity be rated the same as high immediate physical damage? (But the study was intended to provide data to make decisions, not to actually provide decisions; in which case, providing rankings was a little counter productive.)

Nutt released a new study in the last few days that updated the original study with 7 new categories to measure harm to others.

This article (Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack') at least implies indirectly that the number of users figured into the new added categories, but this is the article that's hard to gain access to.

Thanks BobG, good catch! I will try to find it.

Here is a description of the "study", turns out it wsn't a study at all.

The Lancet analysis ranked 20 drugs according to harms attributed to them by Nutt and other experts in a “one day interactive workshop”

.

The article explains the checklist they used in the workshop in order to come up with this Earth shattering *news*.

Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by Professor David J Nutt from Imperial College London, Leslie A King, the UK Expert Adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, and Lawrence D Phillips from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The researchers report the results of a consultation exercise and analysis carried out by the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD). The ISCD is an independent group founded to review the scientific evidence relating to drugs. The group is chaired by Professor Nutt.

Sure sounds credible and unbiased to me.

Here is the new Lancet article. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract

 

[BobG]

Even the original study has some problems.

From Nutt's table:

The physical harm categories seem reasonable. You have direct harm from the drug, plus secondary dangers caused by the method of ingestion. Intravenous drug use carries hazards completely unrelated to the drug itself. Heroin and barbituates are the two drugs most likely to cause immediate harm, while tobacco and marijuana have little chance of immediate harm (with the risk presumably being the chance of being burned alive when you fall asleep with a lit cigarette?). Tobacco, heroin, and alcohol are the three drugs most likely to cause long term harm from chronic use.

The dependence categories might be a little questionable. In Nutt's table, pleasure equals harm. The more pleasurable a drug, the worse it is. Heroin and cocaine tie for the most pleasurable, with alcohol and tobacco tied for third.

I wouldn't even touch the social harm, since that seems very subjective, even if it might be reasonable.

I wonder how sex would rank. There's some risk of STDs, a small risk of physical harm from overly enthusiastic sex, but probably very little long term harm from chronic practice. It's also very pleasurable, which would definitely make it bad.

In fact, I'd put the mean physical harm at 0.6 if precautions against STDs were taken and no costumes were involved. Pleasure would rate a 3.0, pyschological addiction a 2.6, especially considering the 'love' emotions that often accompany sex. I think the physical addiction would be low; but at least higher than a physical addiction to ingesting solvents, perhaps a 0.2 - yielding a mean dependence of 1.93 (about the same as alcohol). For social costs, intoxication is 0, social harm a 2.2 (many divorces are caused by sexual infedility) - just a little lower than alcohol. Health costs would be low, about the same as Ecstasy at 1.1 (this includes the cost of purchasing viagra, etc) - with a mean social harm of 1.1 (more social harm than ecstasy, but less than steroids). The total harm would be 1.01, which is actually very low considering the pleasure factor. It's more harmful than khat, but less harmful than ecstasy.

Love is the drug! (But a Class C drug, at most.)

 

[Proton Soup]

Evidently, the thing some kids do in some "dry" indian reservations is to spray an entire can of http://www.wellbriety-nci.org/Publications/ocean.htm" into a cup of water, then drink it. YIKES!

huh. that's got to be better for you than lysol and bread, tho.

 

[mugaliens]

No 'shrooms are better option. Everybody will experience Santa first hand.

Great. Yet another childhood belief of mine utterly shattered. I think I'll wander off and cry, now.

On a more serious note, I've seen the mushroom displays in the malls, but never realized it was usually the same mushroom. We get Christmas' green from the evergreen, a predominanently pagan symbol. Now we know another source of the traditional Christmas red.

 

[bassplayer142]

Don't know where some of you get your information. Nearly 100% of the drinkers I know LOVE the taste of beer. Most of them probably drink to much also but the taste is still a big thing. But they all drink to get a buzz.

EDIT:

I can't believe from what I've read here that nobody hasn't put some of these drugs in a so called different "class"! How can you possibly compare these drugs when they are used for different situations differently. Everyone knows that alcohol is more of a social drug while pot just makes people want to chill out. This post may have strayed from the original intent of the thread but its like comparing apples to oranges. The leading majority of people don't sniff glue because apart from whatever high they get from it it is simply not an enjoyable process. Alcohol is popular because it works so well in social situations (and depressive settings too).

 

[1MileCrash]

But one is not free to harm others, which is what those who abuse alcohol and drugs do. I agree with Evo.

Any way that those who abuse drugs and alcohol can harm others is already illegal.

 

[Evo]

Any way that those who abuse drugs and alcohol can harm others is already illegal.

The study takes social problems into consideration. It's not a scientific study on the physical effects of drugs. The title of the thread is misleading.

 

[1MileCrash]

The study takes social problems into consideration. It's not a scientific study on the physical effects of drugs. The title of the thread is misleading.

It's my fault, I responded directly to a post on the first page, not noticing that this thread spans 5 pages.

Regardless, it touched on the legality of drugs. I was just pointing out that saying that drugs should be illegal because someone might take drugs and therefore increase the chances that he may harm others ignores the fact that whatever action he takes to harm others is already illegal.

Ergo, "cocain should be illegal because otherwise people can just get high off of it and then risk crashing their car into someone" - driving impaired is illegal regardless.

 

[Upisoft]

Great. Yet another childhood belief of mine utterly shattered. I think I'll wander off and cry, now.

Now it's obvious why the alcohol is the most dangerous. Most people will use it to ease the pain... from lost beliefs.

 

[BobG]

Regardless, it touched on the legality of drugs. I was just pointing out that saying that drugs should be illegal because someone might take drugs and therefore increase the chances that he may harm others ignores the fact that whatever action he takes to harm others is already illegal.

Ergo, "cocain should be illegal because otherwise people can just get high off of it and then risk crashing their car into someone" - driving impaired is illegal regardless.

Are you ignoring the fact that many of the activities included under social harm aren't illegal?

It's not illegal for a single mother of five to have her 13-year-old daughter babysit the younger kids 7 nights a week so the mother can spend the family's meager paycheck at the bar, buying sailors drinks so they'll sleep with her.

And it's not illegal for her to threaten to knock the kids' g**d** teeth down their f** throat every morning if they don't shut up and let her sleep off her hangover.

 

[JaredJames]

Regardless, it touched on the legality of drugs. I was just pointing out that saying that drugs should be illegal because someone might take drugs and therefore increase the chances that he may harm others ignores the fact that whatever action he takes to harm others is already illegal.

Ergo, "cocain should be illegal because otherwise people can just get high off of it and then risk crashing their car into someone" - driving impaired is illegal regardless.

I think the key is that it increases the chance of you committing said illegal acts.

Theft is theft and is illegal regardless of the cause. However, a person may not normally steal but the need for their next fix makes them go out and do so.

You can't say "person A went out and stole, the fact they were on drugs is irrelevant". The fact may well be, "person A was so desperate for their fix, they'd do anything to get it. in this case turning to crime". It is an important distinction. Drugs, regardless of which one, can make people do things they wouldn't normally entertain the thought of.

 

[Upisoft]

It's not illegal for a single mother of five to have her 13-year-old daughter babysit the younger kids 7 nights a week so the mother can spend the family's meager paycheck at the bar, buying sailors drinks so they'll sleep with her.

I thought it works the other way, i.e. the sailors buy her a drink, so they can sleep with her.

 

[The legend]

yeah^...works the other way usually.

 

[JaredJames]

She may just really want it...

 

[1MileCrash]

I think the key is that it increases the chance of you committing said illegal acts.

So?

At what point does "preventative laws" just become a nanny state? I'd say pretty damn near immediately. We can't jail someone for doing something that might make them do something that is actually harmful to someone else. Can't drive impaired without a car, make cars illegal?

You can't say "person A went out and stole, the fact they were on drugs is irrelevant". The fact may well be, "person A was so desperate for their fix, they'd do anything to get it. in this case turning to crime". It is an important distinction. Drugs, regardless of which one, can make people do things they wouldn't normally entertain the thought of.

Yes, which usually requires them to break the law, because it's illegal.

I don't really hear much about alcohol lords, commanding gangs of murderers and thieves to make money off of alcohol. At least, I haven't heard of that since prohibition.

Half of the problems that people have with drugs would vanish if they were legalized. Yes, I agree drug dealers on our streets are bad, murdering over drugs are bad, etc. Yet those problems exist because of it's illegality.

And usage going up? I challenge you to find 10 adults who have never done any illegal drugs, and ask them, "if it became legalized, would you start doing crystal meth?" Report your results. The average person doesn't shy away from drugs because it's illegal, they shy away from drugs because they aren't idiots.

And I'm not even going to mention the improvement we'd see in law enforcement. Freeing up our cops to pursue actual crime (harming other people or infringing upon their natural rights) imagine that. And don't get me started on how much more prison space we'd have if we'd release the people who got busted for possession or selling drugs only (if they killed someone because of drugs, stole, etc. then of course let them rot.). Let them free, onto the streets. If they are dealers they are now out of business, since anyone can buy them from a drug store now, and if they are addicts, let them go home and shoot up all they want, as long as they don't bother me.

Call me cold-hearted, cynical, whatever you want, but I firmly believe that sometimes you just have to let people fail.

 

[JaredJames]

1MileCrash. You do realize what drugs actually do to people? Do you know what addiction is?

Legal or not, the effects they have aren't good at all. It is the addiction that drives people to commit crimes. If you legalised heroin, would that make it less addictive? No. People who take heroin still risk becoming addicted to it and once the addiction kicks in it will start to destroy your life (as with any drug). Your ability to work is impaired and you can potentially lose your job. Once that happens, you're still addicted and you still need your fix. So what do you do? You turn to crime.

Your whole "as long as they don't bother me" stance is ridiculous in so many ways. "Let people suffer the effects of what drugs can do to them as long as they don't bother me", just isn't realistic, in any way.

Just because something is legalised, it doesn't mean the crime ascoiated with it disappears. It simply means you go from having illegal dealers to legal ones. All drugs pose problems, some worse than others. Alcohol in moderation isn't addictive. Heroin and Cocaine are. Marijuana, I'm not so sure about.

Your above post, if I'm reading correctly seems to imply all drugs should be legal (as you don't address any specific ones - particularly those causing the biggest problems). If this is the case, then you clearly don't understand the differences between the various drugs and classes available and their effects and harm on society.