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**Lit_Match** · 03-24-2007, 04:25 AM

Study:`Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Drugs'
03.23.07|Associated Press|By MARIA CHENG

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.

Nutt and 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.

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 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 Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet.

Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.

Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs _ including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol _ should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities.

"This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Iversen was not connected to the research. "It is the first real step towards an evidence-based classification of drugs." He added that based on the paper's results, alcohol and tobacco could not reasonably be excluded.

"The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol," wrote Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in an accompanying Lancet commentary. Hall was not involved with Nutt's paper.

While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved.

Nutt called for more education so that people were aware of the risks of various drugs. "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day."

Buzzby · 03-24-2007, 07:24 PM

The full text of the study is available on The Lancet's website: http://DrugRpt.notlong.com. You'll have to register (free!) in order to view it.

Quote:

Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.

I found it odd that cannabis was as high in the list as it was. Several of the drugs ranked as less harmful can produce grave physical harm and death.

**sterbo** · 03-25-2007, 01:25 AM

Quote:

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.

Well,, Duh!

Wonder how much they spent to figure that one out...

.

xxdr_zombiexx · 03-25-2007, 02:08 PM

Crossposted @ Daily Kos | Smirking Chimp | Diatribune

A new medical classification of cannabis as less harmful than tobacco or alcohol - and alcohol being rated as dangerous as heroin - along with a lurid double murder involving a man claiming pot smoking made him do it has the UK all abuzz about the "danger" of pot.

This is some gnarly BS, so put on your hip waders and take the plunge!

We had to listen to this crap a few years ago and John Walters and those liars at the ONDCP trot this shit out from time to time, usually around election times when there are numerous cannabis reform measures on ballots. Here's the basic meme:

Quote:

Today's pot is on average seven times more potent "than the marijuana baby-boomer parents may remember from their days of use or experimentation", he told reporters.

He said the change had led to a doubling of hospital emergency cases involving marijuana.

Mr Walters added: "Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem."

The Bush administration has criticized Canadian plans to reduce sentences for people caught with small amounts of marijuana.

This particular recent propaganda spasm from the UK seems to have been stimulated by the release of The Lancet's latest research and it's presentation of a new rating scale for the dangerousness of drugs. The authorities in the UK have gone absolutely batshit crazy with the use of references to "new superstrong cannabis".

Reefer Madness Trickles Down

To begin with, to demonstrate how important the maintenance of reefer madness is, this effort really comes straight from the top of the UK government after getting another set of "new revelations" from research: Blair plans U-turn on cannabis

Quote:

Tony Blair is planning a controversial U-turn on cannabis laws and the reintroduction of tough penalties after an official government review found a definitive link between use of the drug and mental illness.

The Independent on Sunday can reveal that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has detailed evidence showing cannabis triggers psychosis in regular users. The findings are expected be used by Mr Blair to overturn the decision made two years ago to downgrade the drug. The reports makes it "an open door" for ministers to change the law, according to one official.

Mr Blair is keen to reverse the controversial decision to downgrade its status from B to C, taken by David Blunkett. His successor as Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, asked the Government's official advisory body to reassess the classification of the drug after a public outcry.

So Tony has let slip the dogs of the war on cannabis. He is in such deep political trouble I will argue he's turned to reefer madness as a red herring.

Now the papers are filled with lurid 1930's-style bullshit about superstrong cannabis that makes people kill. Check out some of these gem headlines culled RECENTLY - as here in the 21st Century - by the BBC:

Quote:

Police issue warning about super strength Cannabis

Cannabis addiction soars as drug gets stronger

STRONG DOPE MAKING KIDS MENTALLY ILL

Quote:

SUPER-STRONG cannabis is "rewiring" youngsters' brains, Scotland's top drug cop warned yesterday.

Graeme Pearson, head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said the "skunk" now being sold on our streets is far more potent than the cannabis smoked by hippies in the 60s.

Same old shit, over and over.

Cops are the "authorities" on cannabis, until you ask them about hemp - then they swear they can't tell the difference between bamboo and a Christmas Tree. The UK's top cop is also a neurologist? What a busy man!

Have some more of this swill - I insist:

Quote:

Pearson said super-strength cannabis is "just like cocaine and heroin, as it rewires young people's brains".

He also criticized the decision to downgrade cannabis to a class C drug. He said: "Young people may think, 'If this is category C, it is harmless.' But doctors are telling us it is highly dangerous."

Again, the Lancet released a study (registration required) rating cannabis far less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, but more "harmful" that ecstasy, which I cannot fathom, but there it is.[quote]Drugs harm society in several ways—eg, through the various effects of intoxication, through damaging family and social life, and through the costs to systems of health care, social care, and police. Drugs that lead to intense intoxication are associated with huge costs in terms of accidental damage to the user, to others, and to property. Alcohol intoxication, for instance, often leads to violent behaviour and is a common cause of car and other accidents. Many drugs cause major damage to the family, either because of the effect of intoxication or because they distort the motivations of users, taking them away from their families and into drug-related activities, including crime.

Societal damage also occurs through the immense health-care costs of some drugs. Tobacco is estimated to cause up to 40% of all hospital illness and 60% of drug-related fatalities. Alcohol is involved in over half of all visits to accident and emergency departments and orthopaedic admissions.12 However, these drugs also generate tax revenue that can offset their health costs to some extent.

Quote:

One glaring omission from this arrangement is accounting for the detrimental impact of specifically-designed punitive laws focused on damaging people who are caught with cannabis. They cannot come out and say cannabis kills. It doesn't. We would all know by now and there'd not be any questions. But they don't 'fess up and indicate how badly people are damaged by involvement with the legal system.

Speaking of killers, here's a surprise...not:

Tobacco and alcohol have a high propensity to cause illness and death as a result of chronic use. Recently published evidence shows that long-term cigarette smoking reduces life expectancy, on average, by 10 years.9 Tobacco and alcohol together account for about 90% of all drug-related deaths in the UK.[quote]Does anybody still seriously question that cigarettes cause cancer? No. If cannabis killed, it would have killed people a long time ago. I know people it would have killed, but they are just fine.

Cannabis and The Murders

Also happening fortuitously for our lying, reefer mad friends, we have a "high profile" double murder being paraded through the UK press as being "caused" by the murderer's cannabis smoking

Quote:

The grim warning of Reefer Madness appeared to be played out for real this week with the jailing of teenager Thomas Palmer, who stabbed his two friends to death after a history of heavy cannabis use.

During his trial, a doctor who had been treating Palmer since his arrest told the jury: "I believe that his state of mind at the time of the killings was not normal.

"This was exacerbated, but not caused, by cannabis."

*****

The Daily Mail instantly branded Palmer the 'drug-crazed killer' and the case sparked calls from senior police, politicians and newspapers to reverse the 2004 reclassification of cannabis from a class B to a class C drug.

The Liverpool Echo declared it had unearthed super-strength cannabis "so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff."

The BBC goes on to tell the whole story, that of which I have always called "Smokescreen".

Smokescreen means that somebody has done something really terrible and likely something "crazy" and they blame the Evil Weed for it.

Society is conditioned through the non-stop reefer mad propaganda stream to accept unquestioningly that cannabis is bad and capable of causing anything the authorities - it is ALWAYS the police cited as "experts" about pot - claim.

They will let someone like our murderer friend here to "take responsibility" for his actions by claiming he was out of his gourd due to the "superstrong skunk": remember the headlines from above?

Quote:

They are gleaned from defence barristers who use the fact their client's judgement was clouded by smoking cannabis to plead diminished responsibility, judges who point the finger at cannabis use as a way of explaining motiveless crimes and coroners who choose to highlight an offender's marijuana intoxication over alcohol abuse or mental disorders.

In the case of Thomas Palmer, the jury rejected his plea of diminished responsibility - a state of mind which the defence sought to blame on cannabis.

That cannabis can cause mental health problems among heavy users is well documented and undisputed.

But there is little evidence to back claims that the drug, or its contribution to a decline in people's mental health, can itself trigger violence.

Virtually every piece of research carried out in the last 45 years debunks the cannabis causes violence myth.

Note: Cannabis does NOT cause schizophrenia. This is one of the most horrible lies. It undermines mental health progress when they go on like this. Schizophrenia is a genetic disorder that is passed through families.

Cannabis DOES exacerbate and can precipitate the onset of psychotic symptoms in people PREDISPOSED to having the illness.

But that's not very scary-sounding, so reality has to be "sexed up".

Such a shitstorm flew out of the heavily-invested reefer mad forces in the UK - law enforcement, much as here, loves to get all frothed up about the evils of mar-ju-wanna, that the Independent UK, a longtime supporter of sane cannabis reform has appeared to capitulate and issued a formal apology for thinking cannabis might be less harmful that the propaganda tells us.

Quote:

More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction - and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalized./

A decade after this newspaper's stance culminated in a 16,000-strong pro-cannabis march to London's Hyde Park - and was credited with forcing the Government to downgrade the legal status of cannabis to class C - an IoS editorial states that there is growing proof that skunk causes mental illness and psychosis.

The decision comes as statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that the number of young people in treatment almost doubled from about 5,000 in 2005 to 9,600 in 2006, and that 13,000 adults also needed treatment.

The skunk smoked by the majority of young Britons bears no relation to traditional cannabis resin - with a 25-fold increase in the amount of the main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), typically found in the early 1990s. New research being published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results will increase the pressure on the Government to have a full debate on drugs, and a new independent UK drug policy commission being launched next month will call for a rethink on the issue.

God... that's embarrassing: once proud paper now shilling for the reefer mad. Pathetic.

Ages ago liars made up a world of bullshit about cannabis and added to it as the years went on. It still goes on despite having been debunked time and time again.

For example: The GateWay Theory:

Quote:

Marijuana is not a “gateway” drug that predicts or eventually leads to substance abuse, suggests a 12-year University of Pittsburgh study. Moreover, the study’s findings call into question the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts and governmental policy for six decades and caused many a parent to panic upon discovering a bag of pot in their child’s bedroom.

After every debunking, "New Research" appears and new debunking is needed; but you know what Mark Twain said about lies making it halfway round the world before the Truth coud put it's shoes on. Cannabis prohibition is an excellent example of this.

So, to recap:

* Cannabis is not a deadly drug: that is a lie.

* Cannabis does not promote violence: that is a lie.

* Cannabis can precipitate symptoms of psychosis in people predisposed (or "genetically loaded" for) psychotic illness.. but that is no reason I should set at home in the evening unable to smoke pot if I want.

* Cannabis is not a "gateway drugs": that is a lie.

* Cannabis prohibition is a powertool and great budget-enhancer for law enforcement.

* Reefer madness is a powerful political force than has demonstrated the ability to cause major policy shifts in historically good journalistic institutions.
.

reggie_the_dog · 03-25-2007, 08:02 PM

The prohibitionists are really freaking out with all of the actual scientific studies coming out saying cannabis is not that bad.

03-24-2007, 04:25 AM	#1
Lit_Match Moderator Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 2,599 Grams: 25,937.23 Groans: 1 Groaned at 3 Times in 3 Posts Thanks: 156 Thanked 884 Times in 475 Posts Stock Portfolio Total Value: 0.000 Gain/Loss: 0.000%	UK: `Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Drugs' Study:`Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Drugs' 03.23.07\|Associated Press\|By MARIA CHENG 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. Nutt and 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. 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 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 Nutt and his colleagues in The Lancet. Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services. Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs _ including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol _ should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities. "This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Iversen was not connected to the research. "It is the first real step towards an evidence-based classification of drugs." He added that based on the paper's results, alcohol and tobacco could not reasonably be excluded. "The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol," wrote Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, in an accompanying Lancet commentary. Hall was not involved with Nutt's paper. While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging, they said that governments should review the penalties imposed for drug abuse and try to make them more reflective of the actual risks and damages involved. Nutt called for more education so that people were aware of the risks of various drugs. "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day." __________________ Donation links to NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) \| MPP (Marijuana Policy Project) Real Americans working to win our country back The National Security Archive Posting Guidelines

03-25-2007, 08:02 PM	#5
reggie_the_dog Sr. Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 660 Grams: 4,690.64 Groans: 0 Groaned at 0 Times in 0 Posts Thanks: 0 Thanked 27 Times in 23 Posts Stock Portfolio Total Value: 0.000 Gain/Loss: 0.000%	the prohibitionists The prohibitionists are really freaking out with all of the actual scientific studies coming out saying cannabis is not that bad.

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