Scal Capone

There's a difference between getting drunk and inducing a change in one's psychoactive state. Even modest amounts of alcohol will induce psychoactive changes. Alcohol tends to be included when discussing "drugs of abuse." There's an acceptance that there are unique cultural aspects for each substance, but that doesn't mean they are "completely different." The distinction between alcohol and other drugs of abuse is, indeed, cultural. There are many ways in which the psychological syndromes (e.g. addiction and it's constituent psychological aspects) that sustained use can produce may be similar. Likewise, there are unique aspects to each drug. Some of which I have mentioned previously. There are instrumental theories of nonaddictive use (see Muller & Schummann, 2011 for example), which seek to explain nonaddictive drug use is terms of the positive utility that substances offer (socialisation, increased confidence, entheogenic experiences, sex etcetera). Others counter such theories and suggest that significant portions of the explanatory power of nonaddictive drug use is grounded in sensation seeking/impulsivity. Impulsivity has been identified as having a causal role in substance abuse. What's interesting is that the relationship between impulsivity and the rate of substance administration appears to be bi-directional. For example, rodents that have been identified as high impulsivity will administer significantly more drug than low impulsivity counterparts. Chronic exposure to drugs of abuse increases impulsivity. I don't think it's possible to reduce psychoactive substance use down into nice, easily-digested, populist chunks of information because the reasons for such use are so many.

Alcohol is a drug. But they aren't completely different. There are unique, substance-specific aspects for each drug. Alcohol is a drug too.

People in the self-service queue at supermarkets who think that it'd be quicker to scan a whole basket's worth of items than wait in the queue to get somebody at the till to do it for them, only for it to take about 5 minutes for them to scan through the items, pack it and pay for it. Twats!

I've never said they wouldn't, though. It's unequivocally clear that alcohol is a bigger problem for society as a whole, and for the individual user, than cocaine. Yes, the harm to society is skewed - to an extent - by higher prevalence, but that doesn't render the idea that alcohol abusers cause many more societal problems than cocaine abusers invalid. Alcohol abuse is a huge, huge problem. It's important to remember too, that like with alcohol, most people who abuse cocaine will probably use it semi-regularly rather than daily. Most people who take drugs, in fact, aren't addicts. I'd like to reiterate again, that I'm not saying cocaine is harmless, it clearly isn't, I'm merely making the point that there's an argument to be made, that alcohol is as bad, if not worse, and that I find the moralistic position of those who abuse alcohol strange. Mike Skinner got it right when comparing marijuana use and alcohol use in The Irony of it All. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZx5OgKQNrA

Methamphetamine was ranked the most harmful drug to the user, it has far fewer effects on the wider society, though, than alcohol, heroin and crack. The measure isn't informed by a single criterion, it's composed of two parts (harm to the user and harm to others), with each subsection consisting of multiple criterion. Anybody who is interested in reading the manuscript can do so here. http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_old/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf To be absolutely clear, nobody is saying that these drugs are harmless.

I'm not making a "trendy" argument, I'm advocating an alternative perspective based upon empirical studies conducted by a world leading professor in the arena of drug harm. The index is based on criterion in a number of areas that are considered harm, either to the user or wider society. I assume some of those criterion - particularly in the categories pertaining to harm to others - are indirectly affected by prevalence but in the absence of clearly defined methods, it's impossible to say with any certainty. However, other criterion - particularly those relating to harm to the user - most likely relate to the level of the individual rather than the population. It is important to compare, for example, the pharmacological profile of each substance. Alcohol has an incredibly complex pharmacological profile, displaying potent affinities for the GABA, glutamate (AMPA, kainate, NMDA), acetylcholine, adenosine and serotonin systems, as well as a capacity to influence transmembrane proteins such as calcium channels, which modulate the exchange of ions across the neuronal membrane. Cocaine, in comparison, is a relatively clean drug, in that it is a high-affinity inhibitor of the dopamine transporter (DAT), which leads to an accumulation of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, though it is also a relatively decent inhibitor of serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake. In considering such differences, one can begin to understand why alcohol has a much greater dependence liability than cocaine. That is, continued alcohol abuse invariably leads to the development of physical dependence, whereas cocaine does not - it tends to produce a psychological dependence. Sustained alcohol abuse can also produce a psychological dependence. Anyway, the point of this is that alcohol abuse produces a physical dependence syndrome by virtue of its pharmacology that, in certain instances, can be fatal whereas cocaine does not. Consequently, discussions around drug harm are, by their very nature, incredibly complex and don't tend to lend themselves to soundbites.

It's probably related entirely to its prohibition.

Cocaine can be a pretty nasty drug in terms of its psychological (i.e. paranoia, addiction) and physical effects but there's something remarkable about the way otherwise rational people approach drugs. Oftentimes people make moralistic judgments concerning drug users whilst often overlooking or downplaying their own drug taking (cognitive dissonance). For example, if I was to poll members of this forum to establish the prevalence of regular alcohol abuse, it's very likely such rates would be relatively high but, unless one is deemed an alcoholic, there are few negative social connotations associated with regular alcohol abuse. Yet, David Nutt, a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, created a drug harm index which combines both the harm associated to users and the wider harm to society for widely abused substances. Alcohol was ranked as the most harmful. There is , I concede, something inherently seedy about sniffing lines of powder from a toilet cistern which isn't the case when quaffing a pint of IPA.