Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

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Polecam każdemu, ponieważ większość społeczeństwa używa lub zna osoby, które używają legalnych substancji psychoaktywnych takich jak alkohol czy nikotyna. This book only serves to reinforce my views in this area (inevitably), and provides me with a strong scientific and ethical case about how to minimise the harms of drug use.

In the book (and this paper – published in a leading psychology journal) he argues for the greater danger from Equasy.After all, even if you’ve not given it much thought before, it stands to reason that a prison sentence and criminal record will do more harm to an individual’s life and prospects than the physical effects of, say, cannabis. But it is the addicts that commit the most crime; addiction treatment has been shown to have a causal effect in reducing crime, and it is the addicts that are most at risk of adverse health consequences. What was remarkable about this paper was our finding that alcohol was the 4 th most harmful drug in the UK – below heroin and crack cocaine but above tobacco, cannabis and psychedelics. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

I'd read How to Change your mind any day for a more nuanced and historical account of this specific class, one that might actual have something meaningf David Nutt is Edmond J Safra Professor of Neurosychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, but is best known as 'the scientist who was sacked' by the UK's Home Secretary because he compared the harms of horse-riding with taking ecstasy or cannabis. Where there is … doubt about the potential harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. Being sacked, then, might have been a liberation for Nutt, who later cofounded the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD), where he was joined by scientists who had resigned from the ACMD for holding similar beliefs.The newspapers widely reported it and its adverse effects, wrongly attributing a number of deaths to it (in fact mephedrone was only found to have contributed to 2 deaths). I include alcohol and tobacco in this; Nutt certainly makes a powerful case against both of them, which I appreciated.

and policies that rely on stopping all drug use (except alcohol and tobacco, which somehow don't count), simply aren't going to fly. Nutt recognizes that despite “a strict legal division” between drugs that enable users “to experience pleasure and to relieve suffering,” things are never so simple.Professor Nutt takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the history and science of psychoactive substances - legal and illegal - and explores the disconnect between the science and policy. A condition from which (from the paper) “ The harmful consequences are well established – about 10 people a year die of it and many more suffer permanent neurological damage as had my patient. With alcohol we feel more open to talking, with tobacco less nervous, with heroin we can get the pain to go away.