ALCOHOL, TOBACCO MORE HARMFUL THAN ILLEGAL DRUGS: STUDY

LONDON (AP) -- Alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than illegal
drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy, according to a new British study.

In research published today 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 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 per cent 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 their paper 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.

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," said Nutt. "Even the ones
people know and love and use every day."