Is alcohol worse than ecstasy ?

[robert whitfield]

Tuesday 5th February 2008, 9pm, BBC Two
Recent research has analysed the link between the harmful effects of drugs relative to their current classification by law with some startling conclusions. Perhaps most startling of all is that alcohol, solvents and tobacco (all unclassified drugs) are rated more dangerous than ecstasy, 4-MTA and LSD (all class A drugs). If the current ABC system is retained, alcohol would be rated a class A drug and tobacco class B.
The scientists involved, including members of the government's top advisory committee on drug classification, have produced a rigorous assessment of the social and individual harm caused by 20 of the UK's most dangerous drugs and believe this should form the basis of future ranking. They think the current ABC system is arbitrary and not based on any scientific evidence.
The drug policies have remained unchanged over the last 40 years so should they be reformed in the light of new research?


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/prog...band/tx/drugs/

Reputation Comments on this post:

interesting link, thanks for the input

[Mr.C]

It was an interesting program. I really hope the government takes notice and reclassifies the drugs. But I somehow doubt they will.

What really knarls me, is that Magic Mushrooms don't even make the top 20 most dangerous drugs, and yet they are Class A! I mean seriously WTF is that about?!

Here is the chart by the way:

[rockbottom]

hell yes. xtc kills a few Etoh kills millions worldwide. ~Peace~
Rockbottom

[RaverHippie]

Hooray for common sense in the scientific field. Let's home this information will lend itself to a wise decision for policy-makers.

[Archenemy]

MDMA is put under the category of a "soft drug" while Alcohol is labeled a "hard drug".

SWIM honestly know nothing about MDMA, but knows that Alcohol can be very destructive. In SWIM's opinion Alcohol is worse then MDMA.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

Originally Posted by Archenemy

MDMA is put under the category of a "soft drug" while Alcohol is labeled a "hard drug".

SWIM honestly know nothing about MDMA, but knows that Alcohol can be very destructive. In SWIM's opinion Alcohol is worse then MDMA.

Really?Most the undeducated people around swim consider alcohol to be the most harmless thing one can do,alot of them don't even consider alcohol a drug.Ofcourse these are the people that believe in the war on drugs.

[Senor Gribson]

i noticed they considered both social and individual harm, meaning they would have included many negative effects directly linked to prohibition, and yet alcohol and tobacco still come out near the top.

i am very surprised to see khat on the list, but not coffee or ephedrine. really, how many people have even heard of khat?

edit: i guess khat use is more common that i thought, but this was a UK study, so would still have expected caffeine and ephedrine have a priority over something relatively unknown to the west like khat

[Psych0naut]

I think it can be compared to shark attacks and car accidents. The chance of getting attacked, let alone killed by a shark is neglectible. There are more than 6 billion people on this planet and around a dozen get killed by sharks each year. Still many people are very afraid or even terrified of sharks, and most people rather see a dead shark than a live one. This has a lot to do with the media. Jaws, Deep Blue Sea and plenty of other movies about savage man eating sharks have given the shark a very negative and biased image. The very rare occasions that shark attacks do occur, it reaches the front pages of all newspapers and makes the six o' clock news on tv, portraying the attack as a gruesome savage attack by a blood thirsty man eater. Meanwhile many millions of people die each year due to car accidents, but does the car that causes those fatalities have a bad image? No, we even pay large amounts of money to buy them, and the largest part of the commercials on tv is about the newest models of Nissan, Audi, Peugoet or any other manufacturer.

Ecstacy barely does any harm, it rather does a lot of good, it has a very large therapeutic value, and can give people the best experience of their lives. Ofcourse it isn't completely free of harm, but the possibility for any harm can be reduced to zero is a few basic precautions are taken, like drinking the right amount of water(not too much, or too little), don't dance on it non-stop for the whole night in a hot club, don't combine it with alcohol or any other drugs or medication(both licit and illicit) and always get your pills tested to be certain of what's in them.

The people who are so biased about ecstacy are the ones who have never taken it themselves, they are too narowminded to ever try it out. Unfortunenately the media and the goverment have made a long lasting impression about ecstacy on people, which is hard to change.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Great comparison I shall surely rob

[Orchid_Suspiria]

Unfortunately thinking for yourself is a skill people seem to have lost.No wonder a society that discourages free thought would tell you mdma and psychedellics are bad while good ole alcohol is the greatest thing on earth.It sickens me.

Reputation Comments on this post:

very true

[Petethemeat]

Both Psychonaut and Orchid, I agree whole heartedly...

[juanathan]

Originally Posted by Mr.C

It was an interesting program. I really hope the government takes notice and reclassifies the drugs. But I somehow doubt they will.

What really knarls me, is that Magic Mushrooms don't even make the top 20 most dangerous drugs, and yet they are Class A! I mean seriously WTF is that about?!

i saw that too! thats perplexing to say the least. i would consider them one of the most dangerous drugs just because there are so many toxic look-alikes.

[Joe Duffy]

I see the D.E.A. don’t even have alcohol on their graph I guess they realised

“It's not a drug, it's a drink!” as for the cannabis on their list it seems a little

bit odd, maybe it’s an American thing or maybe one should take everything

that the D.E.A. says with a grain of salt.

[JaWill88]

it's completely rediculous that both alcohol and tobacco do not come before heroin. whats next is barbituates and benzodiazepines. that should come after the tobac and alc. these can and will kill you, not even necessarily by overdose, but by just not having it!! at least for alcohol, benzodiazepines, and barbituates. their withdrawals make heroin withdrawals look like fucking nothing. like it's not even a thing. heroin has been highly misplaced all though this is coming from someone in the United States so swim it is probably different in the UK. even mdma/ecstacy should probably come before heroin as well as methamphetamine. but once again from a US prospective.

[Salvinorin A]

Woah what?? seriously? MDMA does all kinds of things that SWIM would consider worse than alcohol.

It completely drains serotonin levels, a neurotransmitter needed for all kinds of things such as regulating mood and sleep cycles. Worse, sometimes dopamine is reuptaken back into the cells on accident in the huge rush of neutrotransmitters and after being broken down by an MAO, it becomes toxic to the serotonin cell. MDMA in general can be neurotoxic. It's also known to impair memory. Alcohol also does a mess to the body, but in swim's opinion, not nearly as much of a shock to the body.

Alcohol may be more available, and harder to control because of it, but put the two drugs side by side.....swim thinks there's a huge difference.

Ecstacy barely does any harm, it rather does a lot of good, it has a very large therapeutic value, and can give people the best experience of their lives. Ofcourse it isn't completely free of harm, but the possibility for any harm can be reduced to zero is a few basic precautions are taken, like drinking the right amount of water(not too much, or too little), don't dance on it non-stop for the whole night in a hot club, don't combine it with alcohol or any other drugs or medication(both licit and illicit) and always get your pills tested to be certain of what's in them.

Sure one can take it relatively harmlessly if taking the right precautions. But it makes swimmers feel very very good, which is why swim always hears about his friends' freshman girl friends who end up taking up to 5 in a night, when 1 used to be more than plenty. And none of them know why. Absolute ignorance. SWIM thinks alcohol is much more forgiving. For drinking, the body can recover pretty easily without taking many precautions, with ecstasy, requires a bit more knowledge.

Sal-A

[Jatelka]

For those that are interested in how "harm" was defined for the purposes of the paper this news story was about see here...

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1561&catid=15

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good link

[Salvinorin A]

Thanks for the link, Jatelka. If harm is defined that way....then the listings on that chart make a bit more sense to swim.

[BEEKSc1]

risk associated with drugs
it's encouraging to see articles like this one, it's good to see the word psychedelic show up

I find it humorous that the authors reefer to them as psychedelic-type; if one was to phrase it that way, that person might want to say psychedelic-kind; the author is prolly talking about it's chemical structure (Tryptamine, Phenethylamine), rather than what they lead to

but that's way beside the point, that's a good article

[Nucking Futs]

Originally Posted by rockbottom

hell yes. xtc kills a few Etoh kills millions worldwide. ~Peace~
Rockbottom

I think the reason for this is alcohol is in wide spread use and XTC by comparison is not. If it were as freely available as alcohol is today then the number of deaths from people with severe reactions alone would be very high, let alone the people that would abuse it and not give it the due respect that this kinda drug deserves. JMHO.

Regards,

ME.

[JKLJKLJKL]

I thought the documentary was really good, it touched on the subject and hopefully will open people's eyes to the relative safety of lsd and ectascy. The public opinion on E and MDMA is so annoying and close minded. While the documentary didn;t go into much depth in any of the drugs it certainly hopefully provides the basis for further research.

[dr ACE]

Originally Posted by Senor Gribson

i noticed they considered both social and individual harm, meaning they would have included many negative effects directly linked to prohibition, and yet alcohol and tobacco still come out near the top.

i am very surprised to see khat on the list, but not coffee or ephedrine. really, how many people have even heard of khat?

edit: i guess khat use is more common that i thought, but this was a UK study, so would still have expected caffeine and ephedrine have a priority over something relatively unknown to the west like khat

4MT-A,Ritalin these kinds of drugs a pretty much unheard of. WTF why the hell is caffeine/coffee not on the list!!, that is the most widley use paychoactive drug on the planet. It causes allot more harm than the majoritiy of people realize and most would'nt even consider it to be a psychoactive-drug!. This attitude is deluded and 100% prooves the myths that are sourrounding 'drugs' and that are commonly held amongst the general public.
~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

In some individuals, the large amounts of caffeine can induce anxiety severe enough to necessitate clinical attention. This caffeine-induced anxiety disorder can take many forms, from generalized anxiety to panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, or even phobic symptoms.[72] Because this condition can mimic organic mental disorders, such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, or even schizophrenia, a number of medical professionals believe caffeine-intoxicated people are routinely misdiagnosed and unnecessarily medicated when the treatment for caffeine-induced psychosis would simply be to withhold further caffeine ~ from Wikipedia

[rockbottom]

swim knows that anything in xs in bad for you. but swim also knows that he never got in any kind of trouble with xtc but had many violent bad and demeaning things happen to him behind alcohol " read that as bar fights, breakups and trouble with the law so swim says yes alcohol is worse than xtc--peace and love is not bad---

[Bikelbees]

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49751

The good news to come out of all of this is that the time is now ripe for a challenge to the legislation on its very legitimacy, fitness of purpose and its arbitrary discrimination in favour of the majorities property interests in dangerous drugs (alcohol and tobacco) and the minority interest (largely) equal or less dangerous drugs which are curtailed.

[zera]

Neither alcohol or ecstasy can "do" anything to a person. They're inanimate objects that the user completely controls. There is a use pattern to alcohol and ecstasy that is almost perfectly safe. These surveys make it sound like intoxicants are some sort of uncontrollable animal (well if you keep a tiger in your house, eventually its bound to attack you). My parents have been having a couple of glasses of wine with dinner for the past 30 years and they're never gotten a DUI, been in a bar fight, or gone to the ER. I know people who are responsible, test their pills and use at most once a month in a safe setting and similarly never have any problems. The same can be said for virtually every drug, there's always a safe use pattern.

99% of the time when someone has a drug related problem its because they knowingly used it in a way that any reasonable person could have recognized as reckless. If I got out and get in my car and drive 200 miles per hour down the freeway swerving in and out of traffic, no one cries "Look at all the damage cars are doing to our society" when I ram into a tree and crush my skulls. Similarly if a higher proportion of people crashing into trees are driving Honda Civics than Toyota Corollas, no one points the finger at Honda, saying that Civics are a bigger threat to society than Corollas. No, we recognize that its due to the irresponsible driver, not the car.

[tip]

Unfortunately thinking for yourself is a skill people seem to have lost.No wonder a society that discourages free thought would tell you mdma and psychedellics are bad while good ole alcohol is the greatest thing on earth.It sickens me.

Amen!!

Alcohol is not a drug it’s a drink!!

But if you could magically compress ethanol in to small pills say 2 bottles of Jack Daniels the size of an aspirin. And they were accidentally swallowed people would die! Then it would be considered a drug. Can you imagine the social fear of being slipped the dreaded JD pill the power of 2 bottles of Jack Daniels or pint of vodka miniaturized to the size of an E!! We would have mass hysteria. Then the harmless alchopiss would be fukkn illegal!!
Size equals control = DEA = safe = good. People dont think anymore, too much TV!!

[Psych0naut]

Originally Posted by rockbottom

swim knows that anything in xs in bad for you. but swim also knows that he never got in any kind of trouble with xtc but had many violent bad and demeaning things happen to him behind alcohol " read that as bar fights, breakups and trouble with the law so swim says yes alcohol is worse than xtc--peace and love is not bad---

I don't follow you there. Anything in xs is bad for you. Does SWIY mean anything in a XTC pill is bad for you, or does SWIY mean MDMA is bad for you? If the former, it just depends on where you live. Practically whole Europe has good pills. I can't think of any PMA pills in Europe, only in Australia and the US. Other dangerous or very risky adulterants are unheared of as well. The few countries where shitty pills are the norm, people who buy should know testing them is manditory, to prevent anything nasty from happening. If SWIY meant the latter, as I already explained, if used with common sense, MDMA is a very, very safe drug, and does neglectible harm. Ofcourse if you live in a country where shitty pills with toxic adulterants often pop up, and you still don't care to test them and take them anyway, and with half a dozen at a time, potentially fatal results could happen. Same goes if you take some pills, even just a relatively low dose of pure MDMA, and you dance your ass off for many hours non-stop in a very hot, humid club while drinking beer or no normal fluid and suddenly collapse, dying of heat exhaustion. But that's just plain ingorant behaviour, and I'm sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but I call it darwinism, extinction of those who are not worthy of spreading their genes to produce the following generation. If you want to drive a car but have never done so before, wouldn't you take driving lessons? If you would go to a shooting range and have to handle a firearm for the first time, wouldn't you ask for instructions? If you're going to take a strong psychoactive drug, wouldn't you read up on it's effects?