http://tinyurl.com/2c9k3m
"Alcohol could be more dangerous that consuming popular drugs like cannabis and Ecstasy. In a new classification system, proposed by a team of leading British scientists in The Lancet on Friday, alcohol and tobacco have been listed as more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana. The table of 20 most dangerous drugs was topped by heroin and cocaine followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was voted the fifth most harmful drug, ketamine the sixth while tobacco notched the ninth position. Cannabis came in 11th, LSD 14th and Ecstasy was 18th in the list. The panel led by Prof David Nutt from the University of Bristol and Prof Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council of UK, gave scores, from zero to three, for each category of harm for 20 different drugs.... They say that in the UK, the total burden of drug misuse, in terms of health, social and crime-related costs, has been estimated to be between 10 billion and £16 billion per year with the global burden being proportionately enormous.
