News / Health & Wellness
Alcohol More Dangerous Than Ever
A British study confirms what experts may already know: drinking can be more harmful than drugs that are perceived as much harder and more dangerous.
A new rating system that compared 20 dangerous substances including alcohol, crack cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, found that drinking is the most harmful of all addictive behaviors.
The ratings were part of a study with results released by the British medical journal The Lancet. Experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall. The new rating system, which scores drugs on a scale between1 and 100, scored alcohol at a study high of 72.
That result makes drinking almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco, according to the article. Despite those results, drugs like heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine aren’t off the hook. They were seen as the most harmful drugs to individuals, the study says, while alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others.
Drug Classification System
The article also had panelists looking at Britain's three-tiered drug classification system, which places drugs into different categories that determine criminal penalties for possession and dealing, and they determined that system had "little relation to the evidence of harm."
The study was funded by the London-based Centre for Crime and Justice studies.
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