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Originally Posted by Chris
Misrepresenting those you (presumably) disagree with as championing 'puritanism' isn't really grown up, is it?
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A fair point
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
You're right, the Government does seem to want the evidence to fit its policy, and that's a thoroughly awful way to carry on. However that doesn't mean we have to default to what you're proposing, which seems to be policy-making based purely on scientific evidence. You haven't even begun to address how you define 'harm' - at the moment you seem to be arbitrarily assuming that 'harm' consists of no more or less than what actually happens when you ingest a drug (whether legal or not).
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At no point did I say that "harm" should only be based upon what happens physically when you ingest a drug. I know that there is more to it than simply what you choose to allow to happen to your own body. And Prof. Nutt and co. know that too...
Prof. Nutt, and the ACMD itself did not simply look at "cold hard scientific data about the relative toxicity" of different drugs (& nor did the Lancet study I mentioned).
The ACMD's judgement that cannabis and ecstasy are less dangerous than currently classified, and Prof. Nutt & the Lancet study's judgement that they are actually also less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco, are based upon more than just "cold hard scientific data about the relative toxicity".
The ACMD's Cannabis report, the ACMD's Ecstasy report, the Lancet study, Prof. Nutt's comments... all mention more than just actual physical harm or relative toxicity.
They looked at psychological harm as well as physical harm, they looked at addiction as well as physical harm, they looked at social harm as well as physical harm...
And alcohol and tobacco are, in the opinion of various experts in different fields, more physically harmful, more socially harmful, and more addictive, than cannabis and ecstasy.