Media News > Press releases > 26.03.07

A rational scale for assessing the harm of drugs of misuse

For immediate release
News Release 26.03.07

See embargoed press release from The Lancet below.

Danny Kushlick, Director of Transform Drug Policy Foundation said:

"Transform welcomes this contribution to the evidence on the relative harms of drugs. It should apply further pressure on the Home Secretary to publish the Home Office consultation document on the drug classification system. It should also bring pressure to bear on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to conduct its own independent review of the classification system."

"The current ABC classification system is not just a stand alone index of relative harm. It is part of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that, as well as regulating drugs, prohibits their production, supply and use outside of the legally permitted contexts. The classification system is therefore a system for applying relative criminal penalties out of all proportion to the risk-taking behaviour involved and flies in the face of other social and legislative norms. The prohibition to which the classification system is attached causes many of the harms associated with the use of illgal drugs and all the evidence shows that the misguided pursuit of prohibition is not in the public interest."

"We need to move the production, supply and use of currently illegal drugs into a legal regulatory framework using an index of harm based on the relative dangers associated with the use of drugs within a legal framework, not an illegal one. Prohibition creates some of the greatest policy harms on earth. We know from history that governments regulate drugs better than gangsters."

Danny Kushlick

Director

Lancet Press Release

EMBARGO: 00:01H (UK time) Friday March 23, 2007

The current UK classification of psychoactive drugs into three categories (A, B, or C), has poor correlation with expert ratings of the specific harms* caused by different drugs, and should be changed, according to a Health Policy article published in this week's issue of The Lancet.

Illicit drugs are regulated according to classification systems that claim to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. However, the methodology and processes underlying classification are neither specified nor transparent, and this has led to a lack of confidence in their accuracy and undermines health education messages. The UK drug classification has evolved over nearly a century in an unsystematic way by small changing groups of experts. The information available to them has varied in quantity and quality, and has led to drugs receiving the most risky classification with little scientific basis, with limited opportunity to revise these rankings.

David Nutt (University of Bristol, UK) and colleagues consulted a wide variety of experts to assess the harms of various illicit drugs? using an evidence-based approach, revising their ratings accordingly, and using statistical methods to derive overall rankings of risk. Although the two substances with the highest harm ratings (heroin and cocaine) were class A, overall the independent expert group found that the correlation between classification by the Misuse of Drugs Act and harm rating was not significant. Of both the eight substances that scored highest and the eight that scored lowest, three were class A and two were unclassified.

Alcohol, ketamine, tobacco, and solvents (all unclassified at the time of assessment) were ranked more harmful than LSD, ecstasy, and its variant 4-MTA (all class A drugs).

The authors conclude: "The results of this study do not provide justification for the sharp A, B, or C divisions of the current classifications of the Misuse of Drugs Act. . .We believe a system of classifications like ours, based on the scoring of harms by experts, on the basis of scientific evidence, has much to commend it...The system is rigorous and transparent, and involves formal quantitative assessment of several aspects of harm [and] it can be easily reapplied as knowledge advances".

pressoffice@lancet.com

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