tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11231190.post4853983875345437224..comments2024-03-19T09:24:58.657+00:00Comments on Important Decisions: Drug legalisation debatedanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11446372615834332284noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11231190.post-41828451412122627042010-04-11T19:46:08.797+01:002010-04-11T19:46:08.797+01:00I strongly recommend a read of David Nutt's Es...I strongly recommend a read of David Nutt's <a href="http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus1714/Estimating_drug_harms.pdf" rel="nofollow">Estimating drug harms - a risky business?</a>. Here are a couple of excerpts:<br /><br />The precautionary principle with MMR has been clearly shown to be wrong – it has harmed more people than it has helped. So we need to be very cautious about simply invoking the precautionary principle in relation to drugs. Another very sad example is that of a young woman from the Shetland Islands who died of a heroin overdose. Why was she taking heroin? The problem according to her friends was that she wanted, like her friends and other teenagers to try cannabis. In this isolated community it was, however, much easier to get heroin, presumably because it has a higher unit price and is easier and more pro. table to import than cannabis. This is something we should bear in mind. We don’t know how many deaths are caused by a failure of people to access drugs that are relatively less dangerous because more dangerous drugs are being made available. Making all drugs class A would be a logical conclusion of the precautionary principle, but would be a supreme mistake.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Scottish graduate, Alasdair J M Forsyth, looked at every single newspaper report of drug deaths in Scotland from 1990 to 1999 and compared them with the coroners’ data. Over the decade, there were 2,255 drug deaths, of which the Scottish newspapers reported 546. For aspirin, only one in every 265 deaths were reported – clearly aspirin was of no interest. For paracetamol, there was one newspaper report per 50 deaths, and for benzodiazepines (diazepam and temazepam) one in 15 to one in 50. For morphine, one in 72 deaths were reported, indicating that editors were not interested in this opiate. They were more interested in heroin, where one in . ve deaths were reported, and methadone where one in 16 deaths were reported. They were also more interested in stimulants. With amphetamines, deaths are relatively rare at 36, but , , one in three were reported; for cocaine it was one in eight. Amazingly, almost every single ecstasy death – that is, 26 out of 28 of those where ecstasy was named as a possible contributory factor – was reported. So there’s a peculiar imbalance in terms of reporting that is clearly inappropriate in relation to the relative harms of ecstasy compared with other drugs (Nutt et al., 2009). The reporting gives the impression that ecstasy is a much more dangerous drug than it is. This is one of the reasons I wrote the article about horse riding that caused such extreme media reactions earlier this year (Nutt, 2009). The other thing you’ll notice is that there is a drug missing, and that’s cannabis. Also missing is alcohol, which will have killed a similar number, 2,000 to 3,000 people, in Scotland over that time, maybe more. Of course, cannabis wouldn’t have killed anyone because it doesn’t kill. And that’s one of the reasons why we thought cannabis should be class C because you cannot die of cannabis overdose.<br /><br /><br />Here's the freebie paper article that led me to it:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23818897-dont-ban-meow-meow---give-it-out-in-nightclubs.do" rel="nofollow">Don't ban meow meow - give it out in nightclubs</a><br />This Is London<br />25.03.10JPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05580464462472267475noreply@blogger.com