What Drugs Should Be Legalized – Share All Share options for: How scientists rank drugs from most to least dangerous – and why the rankings are wrong
There is a consensus on drug policy designed to demonstrate the absurdity of the war on drugs: alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, even though alcohol is legal and marijuana is not.
Table of Contents
- What Drugs Should Be Legalized
- Draft Regulation To Prevent Use Of Legal Drugs By Children Approved
- Canada’s British Columbia To Temporarily Decriminalize Some Drug Possession To Tackle Abuse Problem
- Decriminalization Vs Legalization Comparison
- Marijuana Should Be Legal
- Should Drugs Be Legalized?
- Thames & Hudson Usa
- Legalized Marijuana: What Does It Mean For Communities Harmed By War On Drugs?
- Forced Marijuana Treatment Referrals From Law Enforcement Declined More Rapidly After Legalization, Study Finds
What Drugs Should Be Legalized
Perhaps the strongest evidence for this is a 2010 study published in The Lancet, which ranked alcohol as the most dangerous drug in the UK, ahead of heroin, crack cocaine and marijuana. This study has attracted media attention and has been featured in media outlets such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New Republic and here at.
Draft Regulation To Prevent Use Of Legal Drugs By Children Approved
Although drug policy experts generally do not reject the claim that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, the study by British researcher David Nott is certainly controversial. Experts believe that this ranking is very incomplete, especially because it shows the harm caused by drugs in a rather crude and one-dimensional way. Even Nat admitted that the study was flawed.
This may seem like a minor academic quibble, but it is important as researchers and lawmakers seek to advance more scientific approaches to drug policy. Finding the best way to assess drug risk is much more complex than assigning numerical ratings.
Nutt’s analysis measures two different issues about drug use in the UK: the risk to the individual and the harm to society as a whole.
Individual assessments take into account a variety of variables including mortality, addiction, drug-related family distress, environmental damage, and the impact on crime.
Canada’s British Columbia To Temporarily Decriminalize Some Drug Possession To Tackle Abuse Problem
Even if two drugs perform similarly in the NAT assay, the underlying variables behind the results can be quite different. For example, heroin and crack are very close in ranking. However, heroin is much better in terms of mortality risk, while crack carries a much higher risk of psychological harm.
There are also certain differences in individual damage categories. Both alcohol and heroin play a large role in crime. However, the crime risk from alcohol comes from its tendency to make people more aggressive (and more prone to crime), while the crime risk from heroin comes from its wide criminal network.
This analysis does not fully consider the legality, availability or distribution of the drug. If heroin and crack were legal and more affordable, they would probably rank higher than alcohol. Marijuana harm is also likely to increase after legalization, but probably not by much because cannabis use is already widespread.
Because the study only looked at drug use in the UK, some of the results would probably have been different if Nutt’s team had done a similar analysis in the US. Meth, in particular, is considered more dangerous because its use is more common in the state, Nutt said.
Decriminalization Vs Legalization Comparison
However, Nat is sure that alcohol is considered the most dangerous in the United States. “I really don’t see how it couldn’t be,” he said.
Drug policy experts I spoke to about Nutt’s study generally agreed that his analysis and ranking style ignores some of the nuance behind how harmful some drugs are.
John Calkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, cited the example of an alien race visiting Earth and asking which land animal was the largest. When it comes to weight, the African elephant is the largest land animal. But in terms of size, the giraffe is the biggest. And when it comes to length: the Python network is the largest.
“You can always make a composite, but composites have problems,” Calkins said. “I think it’s more misleading than helpful.”
Marijuana Should Be Legal
Explicit measures of drug harm present similar problems. Alcohol, tobacco, and prescription painkillers are more likely to kill than other drugs because they are legal. Therefore, it is difficult to compare their overall effects with illegal drugs. Some drugs are very harmful to humans, but are used so rarely that they cannot pose a major risk to public health. Some drugs are very dangerous in the short term, but not in the long term (heroin) or vice versa (tobacco). And when you look at deaths or other harms from certain drugs, you don’t always take into account substances like prescription drugs that are often mixed with other drugs, making them more deadly or harmful than they would be on their own.
Nott acknowledges these problems, but argues that his analysis is useful for policymakers. In response to criticism in 2011, Knott wrote, “Everyone involved with alcohol and other drugs, from law enforcement to education and from health promotion to international policy, needs an intervention that allows them to assess the relative harms and risks.” understand and communicate with them. I believe we have provided the best analysis currently available of a very complex and multifaceted data set.
Marijuana is generally safer than alcohol. Drug experts generally agree that individuals and society would be better off if marijuana replaced alcohol as the most accepted recreational drug.
Health risks are only one way to measure whether marijuana is safer than alcohol. Although marijuana does not appear to cause organ failure or fatal overdose, more than 29,000 people die each year from liver disease and other forms of intoxication.
Should Drugs Be Legalized?
Alcohol and marijuana are intoxicants, but a study by Columbia University researchers estimated that alcohol increases the risk of fatal traffic accidents by nearly 14 times, while marijuana nearly doubles the risk.
Alcohol’s effect on behavior can also lead to more crime, while marijuana use appears to have little or no effect. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, alcohol is responsible for 40 percent of violent crimes. However, various studies have shown that marijuana does not make users more aggressive or lead to crime.
But how much does all this information really tell policymakers or people? It would be significant for marijuana to replace alcohol once marijuana is legalized (because a safer substance would replace a more dangerous substance), but research on this is still in its early stages. And the argument that alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs can be used as a basis for banning or regulating alcohol just as easily as it can be used to legalize or ban other drugs.
The question policy experts typically ask is not which drug is more dangerous, but how policymakers should treat marijuana and alcohol as separate drugs with their own complex and unique risks. This does not mean just law or prohibition, but regulation, taxation and education.
Thames & Hudson Usa
“There’s always a choice,” said Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University. “There is no field where there is no damage. We have freedom, pleasure, health, crime and public safety. You can get through one or two of them – maybe even three with different drugs – but you can’t get rid of them all. “You have to pay the piper somewhere.”
“The main danger of cannabis is the loss of control over the use of cannabis,” said UCLA drug policy expert Mark Kleiman. “It won’t have any consequences in terms of time spent at full effect. If those hours a day are years, that’s bad.”
Calkins of Carnegie Mellon University puts it another way: “Somehow, we know that spending more than half of your waking hours over the years doesn’t increase your chances of winning a Pulitzer Prize or discovering a cure for alcoholism.”
These problems are exacerbated by the idea that marijuana is harmless: because many marijuana users believe that what they are doing is not harmful, once they get into the habit of using the drug consistently, they feel more comfortable.
Legalized Marijuana: What Does It Mean For Communities Harmed By War On Drugs?
Many studies have also shown that adolescent marijuana use has a number of negative consequences, including cognitive impairment and poorer educational outcomes. Although it is not clear whether marijuana is a cause or effect of these outcomes, experts generally agree that people under the age of 20 should avoid marijuana use.
Research on other health effects of marijuana is inconclusive, but caution should be exercised. One study linked heavy marijuana use to psychotic disorders, but other studies suggest that people with psychotic disorders are more likely to use cannabis. Research on whether smoked marijuana causes lung disease or cancer has produced conflicting results. Studies controlling for smoking have not found a significant effect of marijuana on lung cancer risk.
All this proves that marijuana is not completely harmless – and some of its dangers are probably unknown.
Opioids, including prescription painkillers, have been linked to more deaths across the country, especially in Vermont. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images News)
Forced Marijuana Treatment Referrals From Law Enforcement Declined More Rapidly After Legalization, Study Finds
There is probably no perfect way to assess and demonstrate all drug harms. Researchers must always strike a balance between the simplicity and availability of information for policy makers and the public, and the inherent complexity of drugs and their effects. This makes the task of developing a scientific pharmaceutical policy a great challenge.
Some experts say the complexity of the problem should be taken into account. Calkins and Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland, proposed a model in which all major drug risks are identified and each drug is placed in that category. So
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