Ranking of drugs: a more balanced risk-assessment

Abstract

Adolescents have a natural drive to investigate the unexpected, and experiencing the effects of recreational drugs, either licit or illicit, is part of that drive. However, the use of such drugs might not only result in physical and mental harm for the user, but can also present great burdens to society, such as aggression, car accidents, criminality, poverty, job absence, and health-care costs. Different regulatory approaches have therefore been used to restrict the adverse effects of licit and illicit drug use, varying from punitive prohibition, to partial liberalisation, to full legislation of the drug market. We have argued that criminalisation of drug use has low efficacy in reducing the prevalence of drug misuse, and even seems to promote petty and organised crime. 1 Van den Brink W Forum: decriminalization of cannabis. Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2008; 21: 122-126 Crossref PubMed Scopus (18) Google Scholar Therefore a broader and more sophisticated approach should be considered. Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysisThese findings lend support to previous work assessing drug harms, and show how the improved scoring and weighting approach of MCDA increases the differentiation between the most and least harmful drugs. However, the findings correlate poorly with present UK drug classification, which is not based simply on considerations of harm. Full-Text PDF