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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

This is not news, it has been known for some time. For anyone wanting to get an in-depth, balanced, and rigorous take on alcohol I can heartily recommend Drink? by David Nutt. Reading it has made me more mindful of when and why I choose to drink, and increasingly I find myself drinking less and less.

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Was David Nutt the UK scientific advisor who came out and said weed, lsd, ecstasy are all far less harmful than tobacco and alcohol and was then publicly shamed and abused by the uk Media for daring to suggest such a thing?

He compared taking ecstasy to riding a horse in terms of danger. It's one of many things that led to him being sacked.

Yes, he is known for this graph (The Lancet, 2010): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#/media/File:HarmCau...

Yikes! Alcohol looks like almost 75... harm units? I assume 100 is punching a kitten?

I assume he was sacked for producing such a poor data visualization, or just the political "data" behind it?

No. He was sacked by an anti-science government pandering to a voter block scared and hostile to liberalisation of drug laws.

I would think Crack Cocaine, Heroin, and Methamphetamine are similar to in harm to others (and there’s no way methamphetamine is that much less harmful to others, unless he’s not aware that smoke and production of it are toxic). I’m guessing most of that comes from it being illegal and people needing to steal to get it, so even more surprising is how harmful alcohol is to others even though it is legal. Full paper: https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...

Some of the criteria are that might fall under harm to others are:

Crime

Environmental damage

Family adversities

Economic cost

Community

For judging harm it's interesting how the culture and economics around a drug may chiefly determine the harm, not the substance itself. The measurable harm of different drugs varies across regions.

As far as I know.... unlike the US, the UK doesn't have a large community of dependent meth users. The level of distribution is low and if some did become available, it would probably be used by poly-drug users as an alternative/combination to other party drugs and not give much of an on-ramp to habitual use. The measurable harm would be acute health events like heart issues etc. and not the consequences of long-term use.

> David Nutt

To get a taste of the person before reading the book:

https://youtu.be/bASaIJMxMqI

But that book does not suggest alcohol at any level is bad either. So if they are saying is news. And stupid ill-informed news.

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