UK scientists want to rate alcohal more dangerous than ecastacy

UK scientists are proposing that the drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do, rather than by a subjective, rigid system that exists today.

They say the basis of current drug laws are ill-defined, opaque, and seemingly arbitrary and overestimates the risks of ecstasy, which kills around ten people annually of the half a million people who use it every weekend, while neglecting those of alcohol, a legal substance which kills more than 300 annually by acute poisoning, and many tens of thousands by road traffic accidents, cirrhosis, gut and heart disease.

In the paper, the team argues that it would make much more sense for drugs to be reclassified on a rational basis that can be updated as new evidence emerges, and more easily than the current rigid category system now in use.

In terms of the decreasing risk the drugs were ordered as:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbitutrates
4. Street Methodane
5. Alcohal
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodarepines
8. Amphitamine
9. Tobacco
10. Canabis
11. Solvents
12. 4-MTA
13. LSD
14. GHB
15. Khat

The study was published in Lancelot Medical Journal and led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

Read more at Telegraph