Just out of interest a few statistics on harm caused by the 19 most commonly consumed drugs.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedi..._Drug_Harms_Rankings.png

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract



Active/Lethal Dose Ratio and Dependence Potential of Psychoactive Drugs. Data source: Gable, R. S. (2006). Acute toxicity of drugs versus regulatory status. In J. M. Fish (Ed.),Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy, pp.149-162, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

I wonder how that chart would look though if all the other drugs were subject to the same availability as alcohol.

Pretty different undoubtedly. But some things wouldn't change. I think if everyone could go to the shop on the corner and buy mushrooms there wouldn't be more people dying from overdose or harming others.

My suspicion would be that there would be a whole lot of people saying, why on earth are we destroying this planet we're living on, why are we spending billions designing weapons that can kill even more human beings, why do we have gangsters in Wall Street controlling the world's economy for their own profits?

Where and how is the data derived for the harm to others/harm to self chart? I disagree that meth users harm self far more than others; or that the ratio between methADONE users harming others due to its use is higher than a methAMPHETAMINE user would.

And qat? Who the hell takes qat?

The first chart is:

"Plot showing drug harm rankings for 19 common recreational drugs from a 2011 survey 292 clinical experts in Scotland. Personal harm is on the x-axis and social harm is on the y-axis. Data is taken from bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774/T3.expansion.html which has a corresponding journal article at bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774.full.html"

So every country is going to vary. I'm guessing a lot of countries in north America and Europe are going to have a similar profile with local nuances. Every study is going to use different criteria as to what it regards as "harm to self" and "harm to others". If someone dies of lung cancer caused by smoking, do they include the harm done to relatives watching the process over a couple of years? I don't know.

The first graph that Ufostrahlen posted is from the UK , where qat (or khat) is quite popular with the African community. Up untill 2014 around about 2,560 tonnes were imported into the UK every year (according to the Advisory Council of the Misuse of Drugs).

I can respect David Nutt on a number of aspects in terms of drug use. Steroids, khat, GHB, methadone, mephedrone, butane, ketamine, and benzodiazepenes are less harmful than cannabis? What am I missing, here? I'm not from the UK so this is quite interesting considering the variation from place to place. Are there more adulterated strains of cannabis in the UK compared to other areas?

Weird Or are they assuming that it's always/usually mixed with tobacco and that causes harm to the smoker and harm to others via passive smoking.

In the early Blair years the UK government became pretty lenient with cannabis with the only penalty for normal use being a "caution". They backtracked on that a few years later based on research that showed long term use could cause paranoia. But even if you were to take that as fact, how is that doing harm to others?