Study: Alcohol More Harmful Than Crack

Startling but true, according to one of those expert sources that make these kinds of pronouncements: Alcohol is more harmful to both users and those around them than crack cocaine. It’s worse than heroin too.

The study that says so was just published and publicized by the U.K. medical journal The Lancet. Here’s a link to the study itself; the BBC expounds below. –KA

BBC:

The BBC’s home editor, Mark Easton, writes in his blog that the study involved 16 criteria, including a drug’s affects on users’ physical and mental health, social harms including crime, “family adversities” and environmental damage, economic costs and “international damage”.

The modelling exercise concluded that heroin, crack and methylamphetamine, also known as crystal meth, were the most harmful drugs to individuals, but alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to society.

When the scores for both types of harm were added together, alcohol emerged as the most harmful drug, followed by heroin and crack.

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