http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... nel-4.html
As is mentioned in the article above the previous UK Government chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Professor David Nutt was sacked from his post for telling people that the governments drugs classification system is seriously faulty - this made a lot of people pay attention, even more attention was gained when half of Home Office's Advisory Council's members quit in protest.
Also read the following.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... iding.html
Please note: I am not trying to tell people that all drugs are safe, likewise people should know that not all "illegal drugs" are anywhere near as dangerous as governments tell us. Finally and in some respects the most important point about the mis-classification of drugs by governments means that people no-longer believe what the governments tells us, this is because Ecstacy (an easy example) is nowhere near as dangerous overall as Heroin yet they have the same classification
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
Final note: I am not, or in any way condoning the use of illegal drugs, or even the very harmful legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco - I merely want to hear peoples opinions on the matter.
Below is the current UK government drugs classification.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/drugs/drug-law/
Below is an article that contains a graph comparing the dangers of drugs, dont bother looking and certainly dont comment on the graph unless you read all of the text in the article first.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210
I just found this and thought it was also worth a read.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13354294
Quoted from the Home Office "Just because a drug is advertised as legal does not mean that it is either legal or safe”. I would like to parody that "Just because a drug is advertised as illegal does not mean that it should be illegal or is particulary unsafe”
2008 record = 580 from "Exposure to narcotics and hallucinogens"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... lity-rates
For ecstasy in the years 1993-2006 ecstasy was used by the deceased person an average of 33 times per year, of that number 17 per year as the sole cause. Which according to the guesstimate of 500,000 tablets used per year in the UK that is a (contributory) death rate of 1 in 15,150 pills, or as an absolute cause of death of 1 in 29,400 pills.
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/Ecstasy-%28MDMA%29.htm
Compare that number with the amount of theaths by the massively popular, legal, easily obtainable "Paracetamol" that is probably found in every house in the country. It is of course highly regulated and each and every pill is safe from being "cut" with any number of random nasty things unlike "illegal" drugs, and they come with dosage levels, guidelines, do's, dont's and so on.
Please not that in the following link there is no mention of whether any of these deaths were suicide or accidental.
http://www.pharmweb.net/pwmirror/pwy/pa ... icodm.html
Or put into perspective ecstacy kills about a quarter of the amount of people that ecstasy does even they are both considered "as dangerous" by the government - this is obviously not the case, although to have a better understanding we would need to know how many (pill equivelent) shots of heroin were used per year to get a relative understanding to ecstacy.
http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/drugdeath.html
Andy