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01/03/2007
Booze bigger risk than pot: Experts

The Toronto Star

UK. scientists rank heroin most harmful drug, alcocol 5th worst, and tobacco 9th.

LONDON - Alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than illegal drugs liek marijuana or ecstasy, according to a new classification of drugs published in The Lancet medical journal yesterday.

The table, drawn up by a group of leading British scientists, ranked heroin, cocaine, barbiturated and street methadone as the most harmful drugs, closely followed by alcohol in fifth place.

Tobacco was assessed to be the 9th most dangerous drug behind ketamine in 6th, benzodiazeoines, which are prescription tranquilizers, and amphetamines.

Cannabis was said to be the 11th most harmful. LSD was ranked 14th and ecstasy 18th among the 20 drugs classified.

The classifications were based on individual drugs' so called "harm scores" - the physical damage to the user; how likely the drug was to induce dependency; and the effect of its use on families and society.

The researchers asked two groups of experts - psychiatrist specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medican expertise - to assign scores to 20 drugs, using a scale ranging from 0 ("no risk") to 3 ("extreme risk").

Heroin scored 2.7 on the harm scale with alcohol just under 2. Tobacco scored 1.7 and ecstasy scored over 1.1

According to existing british 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 University of Bristol professor David nutt, referring to the U.K'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," Nutt and his colleagues wrote in The Lancet.

Tobacco caused 40 perfecnt of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all cisits to hospotal emergency rooms. The substances also damage families and tie up police services.