Esctacy less dangerous than horse-riding

[Michael]

Esctacy is less dangerous than horse-riding...

In February the government’s senior drugs adviser compared horse-riding and ecstasy. If the politicians followed the evidence, he said, riding would be classified as more harmful than getting loved up.
...
The drug advisory council’s review, commissioned by the government and published in February, found that, for the vast majority of users, ecstasy is neither addictive, nor does it cause permanent damage to the brain or any other organ. As long as it’s not mixed with other drugs, it doesn’t have much effect on driving—nothing like as much as a couple of pints.
Source (http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10644)

This is based on a British Government report. I think it speaks for itself. According to the report, horseback riding causes far more substantial harm to Britons each year than Esctacy does. This shoots a HUGE hole in the whole "drugs are dangerous" argument used to justify legal prohibition.

[SMadsen]

Consumers, on the other hand, found that it was nothing like LSD, heroin or crack. It doesn’t make the street turn into a spinning, multicoloured fairground as LSD can, it doesn’t make you zone out as smack will and it doesn’t make you want to thump someone, as crack so often does.
It sounds as if the article is solely advocating a reclassification of Ecstacy while it still considers drugs such as LSD, heroin and crack to be justified as class A drugs.

So it may shoot a hole in an "Ecstacy is dangerous" argument but that one drug among hundreds (in practice, that is, - in theory it's an infinite amount) is found relatively harmless doesn't mean that dangers of all other drugs, alleged or not alleged, vanish into thin air.

[Michael]

It sounds as if the article is solely advocating a reclassification of Ecstacy while it still considers drugs such as LSD, heroin and crack to be justified as class A drugs.

So it may shoot a hole in an "Ecstacy is dangerous" argument but that one drug among hundreds (in practice, that is, - in theory it's an infinite amount) is found relatively harmless doesn't mean that dangers of all other drugs, alleged or not alleged, vanish into thin air.
No, but it does suggest that the Government's argument of across the board prohibition based on extreme harm is not actually 'science-based'. It is a morality based argument that pretends to be scientifically rational (without actually bothering to honestly collect some data to look - as soon as one actually collects/analyzes the data, the government position looks absurd). The point is that the Government justifies prohibition on the basis of claiming to have studied the harm. It is pretty obvious that they have never done any such thing.

And if the argument is shown to be bullshit in this particular case, how many other cases are likely to reveal the same bullshit?

Don't forget that smoking pot makes you go insane and masturbation causes blindness. Oh yes, cannibis is defined as a "narcotic" by the law. From a scientific perspective, that's a joke. There's no science here at all. Just elites trying to dictate morality with nothing more than bullshit, bad science and heavy handed authority.

[Multiplum]

Poor professor Nutt (lol) took a lot of shit for saying this.

Studies have shown that heavy ecstasy users are slower compared to non-users. But then there is correlation/causation. The long-term effects need to be studied more closely. The biggest problem with MDMA has always been that the big problems have been so hard to prove, anyway.

"Empathy" would have been a more suitable name for it.

Heavy use is indisputably a bad idea. As it is for most things. There was the case of the Briton who consumed 40,000 street pills over nine years (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/apr/04/drugsandalcohol.drugs1). These are, of course, usually not composed of pure MDMA.

Either way, the potential use in therapy should be acknowledged and explored. This witch hunt is effectively denying a lot of people valuable help.

[SMadsen]

No, but it does suggest that the Government's argument of across the board prohibition based on extreme harm is not actually 'science-based'. It is a morality based argument that pretends to be scientifically rational (without actually bothering to honestly collect some data to look - as soon as one actually collects/analyzes the data, the government position looks absurd). The point is that the Government justifies prohibition on the basis of claiming to have studied the harm. It is pretty obvious that they have never done any such thing.

And if the argument is shown to be bullshit in this particular case, how many other cases are likely to reveal the same bullshit?

Don't forget that smoking pot makes you go insane and masturbation causes blindness. Oh yes, cannibis is defined as a "narcotic" by the law. From a scientific perspective, that's a joke. There's no science here at all. Just elites trying to dictate morality with nothing more than bullshit, bad science and heavy handed authority.
If they have never done such a thing then the author of the article is making a pretty wild claim about scientists who are bad at reading data:

"But it’s also an indication of how bad scientists are at reading the data. If there is one thing for which there is overwhelming evidence, it’s that it is not worth wasting their time or taxpayers’ money giving scientific advice to the home office."

I'm not saying I agree, I just say that this passage in the article is quite contrary to your comment that it isn't "science-based". And of course quite confusingly so since it's apparantly the scientists (the "drug advisory council’s review, commissioned by the government") that hands the author of the article the arguments against the scientists (those who are bad "at reading the data") that the author is out to ditch :ummm:

As it is, I don't generally agree with prohibition based on the risks of physical harm. I agree with prohibition when an issue, or in this case, a substance, causes a breach in society and it therefore becomes in the interest of society to engage in damage control. That's way more than what the natural sciences can assist with. It concerns all the social and political sciences as well and, yes, even morals.

I believe the in the article termed "evidence-based policy" is essential for ethical and properly reasoned political decision-making but the evidence is rarely drawn from natural sciences alone.