Tobacco and alcohol should be classed as dangerous drugs

Tobacco and alcohol should be classified as more dangerous than LSD

London

Adrian O’Dowd

Tobacco and alcohol should be rated as potentially more harmful drugs than illegal substances such as ecstasy and lysergide (LSD), says an influential report from MPs.

The parliamentary science and technology committee has called for a major overhaul in the United Kingdom’s ABC classification system for categorising drugs.

The committee, which published its report into the classification of drugs last week, said that the current classification system was not useful because it lacks consistency in the way some drugs are classified.

MPs argue that there should be a "decoupling of the penalties and the harm ranking of drugs" because the classification system is seen by police as being of minor importance, so it is not making criminal penalties proportional to the harm that drugs do.

Alcohol and tobacco should be included in a more scientific approach to a scale, says the report, as this would give the public a better sense of the relative harms involved.

Together, tobacco and alcohol cause about 40 times the total number of deaths from all illegal drugs combined.

A new league table of drugs and the harm they do has been developed by Professor David Nutt of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the government’s scientific advisory body on drugs policy, and Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

Professor Blakemore said that under the alternative system for categorising drugs he had worked on, alcohol would probably be listed as a class A drug and tobacco as a class B drug.

"We included tobacco and alcohol because the public is very familiar with the harm associated with them. We felt it was good for the public to get a handle on the harm of other drugs if they were set side by side."

The new league table, which has not yet been published but has been submitted to the Home Office for consideration, is outlined in the MPs’ report and places alcohol as the fifth and tobacco as the ninth most harmful of drugs, both higher than class A drugs ecstasy and LSD.

The MPs’ committee also criticised the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, calling its failure to alert the home secretary to serious flaws in the classification system a "dereliction of its duty."

The chairman of the committee and a Liberal Democrat MP, Phil Willis, said, "The current classification system is riddled with anomalies and clearly not fit for purpose. The only way to get an accurate and up to date classification system is to remove the link with penalties and just focus on harm."

Former home secretary Charles Clarke announced that a review was to be carried out into drug classification in January and the new report from the MPs will now be taken into consideration as part of that review.

Alex Paton, a retired consultant physician with a particular interest in alcohol related problems, welcomed the proposal for a new system, saying, "Alcohol and tobacco should have the highest profile in terms of the damage they can do. There should be more of a focus given to them as dangerous substances."

A Department of Health spokesperson said that tobacco and alcohol were legal to purchase, but it was the government’s job to discourage people from using them, and it was doing so in many different ways including legislation and campaigns.

A Home Office spokesperson said, "We will consider closely the science and technology committee’s report and give a full response in due course."

Drug Classification: Making a Hash of it? is available at www.parliament.uk/s&tcom.