It has been hotly debated in the legalization of cannabis in The U.S. The main argument being that although alcohol is legal, cannabis is not. The UK Science and Technology Select Committee underwent an assessment of 20 legal and illegal stimulants in order to classify them to their harmful rates. According to the New Scientist Magazine. Issue 2563. from August 2006, cannabis was placed behind alcohol and classified as a class C substance, with A being the most harmful. The classification of cannabis as a class C substance is however controversial in the U.K. and the present U.K. government is expected to change cannabis back to class B despite on new reports [56] The major points brought to light regarding the case were the comparisons between cannabis consumption and alcohol consumption in temporary impairments, withdrawal, tolerance, and dependence.
Source: New Scientist Magazine. Issue 2563. August 2006, page 5. Drug-danger 'league table' revealed.
Temporary impairments: Alcohol consumption causes severe motor skill deficiency to the point where one cannot perform any physical or mental activities that deal with coordinated tasks. At the same time, judgement and decision making abilities severly decline. Marijuana share the same temporary impairments, but instead of severly damaging the abilities that one has sober, it only merely slows them down.
Withdrawal: The symptoms in alcohol withdrawal of frequent drinkers according to Symptoms of Alcohol Withdrawal written by Buddy T, About.com are as follows:
Feeling of jumpiness or nervousness, feeling of shakiness, anxiety, irritability or easily excited, emotional volatility, rapid emotional changes, depression, fatigue, difficulty with thinking clearly, bad dreams, headache - general, pulsating, sweating, especially the palms of the hands or the face, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, insomnia, sleeping difficulty, paleness, rapid heart rate (palpitations), enlarged, dilated pupils, skin being clammy, abnormal movements, tremor of the hands, involuntary, abnormal movements of the eyelids, a state of confusion and hallucinations (visual) -- known as delirium tremens, agitation, fever, convulsions.
Marijuana withdrawal symptoms, covered in Teens in Treatment Report Marijuana Withdrawal Symptoms written by University of Vermont, for About.com do not nearly number as highly as the only three mentioned are anxiety, aggression, and irritability.
Tolerance: Where one can drink to the point of death, there has been no cases of cannabis intake to the same extent. Alcohol tolerance increases through time, as the abuse becomes larger with more and more intake; as for marijuana usage, the difference between beginning stages and further stages is not much.
Dependence: According to research conducted by Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive?" Marijuana is far less addictive than alcohol. The difficulty in which it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm are all relevant in the statement. Marijuana has been smoked by nearly 50% of all Americans, and only 1% of that number smoke regularly. When compared to the ratio of alcoholics to the total people who tried alcohol, marijuana intake frequency is ten times lower.
Hundreds of reported deaths are linked to alcohol consumption. The consumption of alcohol is also the direct cause of tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. According to http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5337a2.htm, in 2001, there were 331 alcohol overdose deaths and 0 marijuana overdose deaths. Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States and is associated with multiple adverse health consequences, including liver cirrhosis, various cancers, unintentional injuries, and violence. According to http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported 20,687 “alcohol-induced deaths” (excluding accidents and homicides) in 2003.
For those who have been saying drugs are bad etc...
In the UK deaths from the following at running at:
Tobacco 114,000 Alcohol 25,000 (minimum... some estimates say 8 times higher) Opiates 5,000 Cocaine 600 Amphetimines 400 Ecstacy 200 Solvents 50
So the reason again heroin and other class A drugs are banned but not ciggies and alcohol?
Take your time.
Please could you re do your tally chart with a comparison to the amount of people that take the substances so we can work out the percentage of people that die out of the total people that abuse each substance, because, these are just numbers and mean nothing.
It's like accident reports on roads "5 people killed in 2006, please slow down" Now is that 5 people out of 5000 people that used the road in 2006 or is it 5 people out of 100,000 people that used the road in 2006 - changes the statistics and the risk assessment slightly!
heroin is basically just morphine, it can be used to manage pain ;P
cocaine can be used as a local anaesthetic
ketamine is used to tranquilise animals
etc. ;)
Technically it's "morphine is bascially just heroine" as morphine is asynthetic drug based on the chemical structure of Heroine. It's quite a complex structre as well with a briding chain stretching across the molecule.
Synthetic cocaine substitutes are prescribed for pain relief (codeine, cocodamol, codydramol).
