Home » Drugs Are Not All Equally Bad, Mmmkay?

with 8 comments

The Lancet has published a study where scienticians give drugs numeric scores based on various types of harm they cause [login]. The media are liable to give this some attention because they objectively note that there is no correlation between harm and illegality.

You can derive a few interesting ideas from the data that I’m sure the media won’t mention. Such as: despite all the press they get, crystal meth and huffing aren’t really that bad. Perhaps cocaine gets less attention because it has a higher-income following? And I suspect khat might be banned in Canada because only immigrants use it.

The facets of harm they use are Acute Physical (possibility of injury on use), Chronic Physical (injury from long-term use), Intravenous usage (because of side-effects), Psychological Dependence, Physical Dependence, impairment from Intoxication, Social Harm, Health-care Costs, and Pleasure. Although this is a preliminary study and they mention that the facets should be weighted, I believe only the puritan US government would consider Pleasure to be harmful! Therefore, I’ve come up with two weightings of my own:

Selfish

What will give you the most pleasure for the least risk? (Physical harm is weighted twice dependence, because being addicted is less annoying than being dead.)

  1. Khat
  2. LSD
  3. Alkyl nitrites
  4. Cannabis
  5. Tobacco
  6. Solvents
  7. Alcohol
  8. GHB
  9. Ectasy
  10. Cocaine
  11. Buprenorphine
  12. Amphetamine
  13. Methylphenidate
  14. Heroin
  15. Ketamine
  16. Benzodiazepines
  17. Barbituates
  18. Street methadone
  19. Anabolic steroids
  20. 4-MTA

(One can’t help but wonder how accurately addiction counsellors can estimate pleasure, although they are precise.)

Altruistic

What has the lowest cost to society? (This is the ranking a non-paternalistic state would base policy on.)

  1. Khat
  2. Alkyl nitrites
  3. Methylphenidate
  4. 4-MTA
  5. Ectasy
  6. Anabolic steroids
  7. GHB
  8. LSD
  9. Tobacco
  10. Buprenorphine
  11. Amphetamine
  12. Cannabis
  13. Solvents
  14. Ketamine
  15. Benzodiazepines
  16. Street methadone
  17. Barbituates
  18. Cocaine
  19. Alcohol
  20. Heroin

(Obviously alcohol’s social cost needs to be weighed against it’s cultural value.)

Here’s the raw data so you can play along at home (note that the mean of sums isn’t exactly the same as the means of the authors’ data).

Written by Jared

March 24th, 2007 at 7:35 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

«
»

8 Responses to 'Drugs Are Not All Equally Bad, Mmmkay?'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Drugs Are Not All Equally Bad, Mmmkay?'.

  1. Does it occur to anyone else that the plants we are addicted to are the only ones left with a natural survival advantage?

    Jack

    25 Mar 07 at 2:01 pm

  2. First of all, I’m pretty upset that I haven’t even heard of half of these drugs (at least the names in this form). Second, my tick list is pathetic.

    My understanding of Khat is that you pretty much have to have it fresh, otherwise it’s useless. So given that we probably can’t get the fresh stuff, is the next best choice is either LSD or alkyl nitrites, followed closely by E?

    So who’s going to hook us up?

    Ryley

    26 Mar 07 at 11:39 am

  3. Does it occur to anyone else that the plants we are addicted to are the only ones left with a natural survival advantage?

    Even without dependence, being liked by humans is a great evolutionary strategy. For example, if only truffles would allow themselves to be farmed, we would cover the earth with them. Another example is that Dawkins thinks that New England trees are being selected for their autumn leaf colour.

    My understanding of Khat is that you pretty much have to have it fresh, otherwise it’s useless. So given that we probably can’t get the fresh stuff, is the next best choice is either LSD or alkyl nitrites, followed closely by E?

    “Generally Khat makes an excellent house-plant.” I don’t see much information on popper availability in Canada, but it might be in pharmacies or sex shops – the fastest way would probably be to ask around at Hush.

    Jared

    26 Mar 07 at 12:39 pm

  4. Looks like a UVic researcher is one of those leading the legalization charge.

    Jack

    29 Mar 07 at 3:04 am

  5. [...] alcohol addicts have a very high cost to society, so perhaps this is far from good news. Drugs police sociology urban [...]

    News Flash: Drugs Aren’t Bad, Mmmkay? | MentalPolyphonics

    31 Mar 09 at 3:04 pm

  6. [...] despise nor pity them. I’m particularly interested in high-functioning heroin addicts because heroin is generally presented as being so damaging to society, particularly the Vancouver of my [...]

    Film Festival Review: Love at the Twilight Motel [SPOILERS] « MentalPolyphonics

    1 Feb 10 at 2:42 pm

  7. [...] We’ve looked at this in the past, and here is the summary of another new drugs-harm study as reported by the BBC: [...]

    MentalPolyphonics » Drugs Harm List Returns

    1 Nov 10 at 5:52 am

  8. [...] Jack posted, the Independent Committee has done a more sophisticated ranking than Nutt’s previous study. The previous study didn’t include weightings of different factors, which is why I used the [...]

    MentalPolyphonics » Drugs Harm List Returns Background

    1 Nov 10 at 2:08 pm

Leave a Reply

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.