Lancet: Heroin is better than Alcohol
Scientist: Alcohol is more harmful than heroin and cocaine
Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin, ecstasy and crack cocaine.
The scientific study was published in medical journal The Lancet.
Research ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.
Tobacco and cocaine are equally harmful. Ecstasy and LSD are least damaging.
Experts scored each drug for harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities. They said that in terms of the cost to society, alcohol causes the biggest harm. Because alcohol is so widely used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and they will go to extraordinary lengths to get it.
Alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.
Marking substances from zero to 100 based on their criteria, alcohol scored 72 overall, compared to 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. Other drugs examined included: crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20), GHB (18), ketamine (15), methadone (13), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine (6) and magic mushrooms (5).
