Alcohol and cigarettes were more dangerous than illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, the British government's top drugs adviser said yesterday.
Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College London, called for a new system of classifying drugs to enable the public to better understand the relative harm of legal and illegal substances.
Alcohol would rank as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone, he said in a briefing paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.
Tobacco would come ninth and dagga, LSD and ecstasy 11th, 14th and 18th respectively. The ranking is based on physical harm, dependence and social harm.
"No one is suggesting drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree," said Nutt, the chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
"We have to accept young people like to experiment with drugs and other potentially harmful activities, and what we should be doing... is protecting them from harm.
"We therefore have to provide more accurate information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."
Nutt caused controversy earlier this year by saying that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse riding, a claim he repeated in his paper. - Sapa-AFP
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