Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

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There are a variety of reasons for taking drugs, and they are almost all reasons that are hardwired into us.

If you value truth in what you know, then this book is a massive step in the right direction, but be warned, your assumptions about drugs will be challenged. The fallout from this mindset is increasingly apparent, and it's become a popular topic in Latin American countries ravaged by the U.For many health economists, accurately comparing the costs and benefits of different health interventions is their bread and butter. I'd read How to Change your mind any day for a more nuanced and historical account of this specific class, one that might actual have something meaningf The second edition of Drugs without the hot air looks at the science to allow anyone to make rational decisions based on objective evidence, asking: *What is addiction? Nutt declares, “There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption,” and adds that “there is no other drug which is so damaging to so many different organ systems in the body. But it is the addicts that commit the most crime; addiction treatment has been shown to have a causal effect in reducing crime, and it is the addicts that are most at risk of adverse health consequences.

You may not think so, because we arbitrarily divide drugs into those that are legal and those that are illegal. For example, he points out that tobacco and alcohol are drugs that are much more dangerous than many illegal drugs.The muppets in the present and future governments should read this book before wasting another day in the office. This book is a real page-turner and a must-read for anyone who is interested in the topic of legal/illegal drug use. He briefly mentions the studies on psychedelics and addiction (255), but fails to bring home how the results from the Canadian study indicate psychedelic treatment for alcohol addiction is far more effective than any of the alternatives he mentioned before.

Perhaps by dispensing with technical language and explaining the facts clearly, policy-makers may sit up and take note. In particular, Nutt compared the risks of ecstasy use with that of horse riding, claiming ecstasy use was much safer.He is the chairman of Drug Science, a non-profit which he founded in 2010 to provide independent, evidence-based information on drugs. After all, even if you’ve not given it much thought before, it stands to reason that a prison sentence and criminal record will do more harm to an individual’s life and prospects than the physical effects of, say, cannabis. Eminently sensible, science based overview of the main recreational drugs - legal and illegal - with exhaustive discussion of the benefits and harms of each. Professor Nutt does a great job of describing the history, pharmacokinetics, risks and cultural ties of most common drugs. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).

His governmental bosses were even more displeased: He was soon fired, earning the sobriquet “the scientist who was sacked. Which brings us back to cannabis – the only drug in the history of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 ever to be downgraded, following recommendations made by the †Runciman report in the year 2000. In the US there were more than 60,000 deaths from opioids in 2017, a total greater than all the American deaths in the Vietnam war. The result is that politicians have come to lump all drugs together as equally harmful—without paying attention to the dangers of legal drugs—and refuse to make effective or honest use of classification systems.

The newspapers widely reported it and its adverse effects, wrongly attributing a number of deaths to it (in fact mephedrone was only found to have contributed to 2 deaths).