Making a Hash of it.

Disclaimers: I neither encourage nor condone the use of illegal drugs, nor do I encourage or condone the excessive uyse of legal drugs. And apologies to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee for shamelessly stealing the title of this article from their report.

Drugs. They are a toucy subject however, they can also be very dangerous. As with anything dangerous, it is absolutely vital that we tell the truth, the whole truth and nothign but the truth about them. We cannot afford ot be underinformed.

So, a bit of background. Here in the UK, there are 3 levels of drug classification, imaginatively named Class A, Class B and Class C (A being the most dangerous and carrying the heaviest penalties, C being the least). There are also unclassified drugs. Here are a few drugs from each classification:

Class A:

Heroin,
Cocaine,
Street Methadone (used to wean heroin addicts off heroin),
4-MTA,
LSD,
Ecstasy.

Class B:

Barbiturates,
Amphetamines,
Methylphenidate (Ritalin).

Class C:

Cannabis,
Anabolic Steroids.

Unclassified:

Tobacco,
Alcohol,
Solvents.

Now, you'd expect that those in class A to be the most dangerous and those that are unclassified to be the least dangerous, if they are dangerous at all. However, in a recent report, the HoC Science and Technology Select Committee found that this was not the case. Below is a chart showing the relative danger of each of the drugs I have mentioned above (based on their addictiveness, damage to the person and damage to society):

Looking at this, the irrationality of the British drug classificatoin system is shown. Notice Ecstasy, the least harmful of these drugs, is in the same classificatoin as heroin. Notice also, that alcohol is more dangerous than most of the drugs shown and tobacco is more dangerous than cannabis.

The US system is even worse. only a crazy man would put cannabis, a drug that was directly responsible for exactly 0 deaths in the United States last year, in the same catagory as heroin, a drug directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.

It's time we actually got some logical drug laws, and it's also time that we had some conclusive studes as to the effects of various illegal drugs, such as cannabis, so that we can teach children exactly what the dangers are, or aren't as the case may be.

Our Government has tried to brush aside the findings of the committee, but they're here, and in a report available here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/1031/1031.pdf

This is truth.

Thank you and good luck,

Crusader