Well, The Lancet article is interesting. I had always suspected that Tobacco was among the worst drugs out there. But I think that there's some refinedments that need to be taken into account in order to make real decisions about the comparitive harm of drugs.
The March of science has brought more powerful drugs, and the effects of these have been both beneficial and harmful. For instance, the invention of distillation made it possible to have alcohol available at much higher concentrations than in the past, making the problems that some people have with it more serious. What I mean is: When a beverage was only 1% alcohol, it would be difficult to drink enough of it to become drunk and/or violdent, and it would be difficult to obtain such a large amount frequently enough to become addicted to it. Yet now, it is possible for people to drop dead from drinking 75% alcohol, and they don't even need to drink very much of it for it to be harmful - it is the concentration, not the drug, that is the problem.
This is again illustrated in opiates. Man has used the poppy medicinally and recreactionally for mellenia, without much in the way of problems. Yet, once Morphine is extracted from opium in the early 19th century, and used as an aenesthetic, it did help cure pain but also brought much addiction. The invention of Heroin didn't help, it only made things worse. Aside from the tendancy to be addictive, what's so bad about Morphine and Heroin? well, they depress the nervous system to the point where, in the overdose, breathing stops. Interestingly, opium, as a max of several major and many minor alkaloids, contains significant amounts of Thebaine, which is a stimulant - it acts to counter the effects of the morphine. The mixture of Thebaine, Codeine, and Morphine in opium makes it far less of a dangerous drug than Morphine (and Heroin), while providing much of the same high that users of morphine and heroin are chasing. But while it doesn't get one quite as high, it does it safely and for a longer period of time.
Heroin and Morphine scare me, while Opium does not. Opium is wine to Morphine's Whiskey and Heroin's Everclear. It's harder to make a mess of oneself on opium or wine. Still possible, though.
How about the THC world? Ditch-weed, grown in the backwoods of places like New York State, is generally low in THC. You have to smoke quite a bit to get high, which means it's a lot harder to smoke too much. But THC is unlike the earlier examples of Alcohol and Morphine in that I am not sure that one can physically die of a THC overdose. Nonetheless, scientific progress has brought us some very high THC strains and maybe these are a bit too much for some of the amateurs out there, who would be better off starting with some ditch weed and learning how to handle themselves while just a bit stoned before going round the bend with that Saskatchewan Indica.
But who out there is to decide who gets what, at what age, after what training? In the USA, drug education can be summed up as "just say no", and "D.A.R.E.", which are stupid. People want to get high. People want to cut loose, both alone and in groups, and while not everyone needs chemical help most of us can make good use of it. There needs to be some sort of drug education which is factual and real, and some sort of drug social policy which seeks Harm Reduction. I am preaching to the choir here when I say that The Drug War is double-plus stupid, but there needs to be some sort of guidance when using all these very potent and potentially dangerous chemicals.
I don't have kids yet, but I want to. When it comes time for these kids to know about drugs, I want to be able to explain it all with a straight face and not have to worry about what's going to happen to them, either medically, socially, or legally. I can't do much about the law, but it strikes me that it is possible to come up with some rational system for kids to understand drugs for real.
sorry for harsh words, but i hope you'll catch my meaning.
