ALCOHOL IS DEADLIER THAN ECSTASY, SAYS GOVERNMENT'S DRUGS
ADVISER

Alcohol is more harmful and causes more deaths than the drug ecstasy,
a leading scientist who advises the Government on drug safety is warning.

Professor David Nutt, a senior member of the drugs panel which
recommended the downgrading of cannabis, is calling for the current
system of drugs classification to be widened, to reflect the dangers
posed by excessive drinking.

The addiction expert says only 10 premature deaths a year in the UK
can be blamed on ecstasy, compared with at least 22,000 attributable
to drinking. He highlights the fact that alcohol is exempt from an
official system of harm rating despite being the cause of 10,000
assaults a year, unlike ecstasy, which is not linked with violence.

Professor Nutt says in the latest edition of the journal
Psychopharmacology that the Tory leader, David Cameron, is "correct
in his logic" in suggesting that E, currently a class A drug, should
be in a lower category than drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

The scientist, who chairs the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs
(ACMD) technical committee, writes: "Why is ecstasy illegal when
alcohol, a considerably more harmful drug, is not? When we consider
that the possession of a drug that is much less dangerous than
alcohol can lead to a seven-year prison sentence, whereas alcohol use
is actively promoted, perhaps David Cameron did not go far enough."

But Professor Nutt's comments have enraged drugs prevention
charities, who say he is wrong to compare the harm caused by drugs
such as ecstasy with the effect on health from excessive drinking.

"Ecstasy kills at random and there is a lot of cumulative harm," said
David Raynes from the National Drugs Prevention Alliance. "Although
there is a lot of harm from alcohol, very few people just die from
drinking alcohol, but they do die from taking E. If the Government
does downgrade E, then it sends a signal that it's less harmful than
it was before."