Dawn Just a bit of perspective over the drugs you favour for yourself and your children and some reality over the one My home, family, business and life has been attacked, vandalised and invaded over, for the last 42 years.6.4 Around a quarter of the UK adult population drink above the recommended weekly guidelines, which increases the risk of causing or experiencing alcohol-related harms. The Department of Health have calculated that the cost of alcohol-related harms in England alone is up to £20bn per annum. These harms include: • harms to health; • crime and anti-social behaviour; • loss of productivity in the workplace; and • social harms, such as family breakdown. 6.5 The Department of Health estimate there are over 30,000 hospital admissions annually for alcohol dependence and up to 22,000 premature deaths per annum. Tobacco;6.6 Although tobacco use has decreased in the UK over the last 30 years there are still 106,000 deaths in the UK caused by smoking every year (84,900 in England). Smoking costs the NHS about £1.5bn per year. Main diseases include lung cancer, bronchitis, and heart disease.6.7 Harms from tobacco are predominantly confined to the harms to an individual’s health and to some extent those around the user. The social harms to tobacco use are minimal compared to alcohol. Nicotine can induce strong dependence in individuals where they find extreme difficulty in maintaining abstinence even when the damage to health is clearly apparent.Controls;6.8 There has not, in the UK, been any attempt to impose controls comparable to illicit drugs where it would be an offence to possess and supply alcohol and tobacco. The social acceptability of, for example, alcohol would make such controls unacceptable to the majority who use alcohol responsibly and therefore impractical. But alcohol and tobacco account for more health problems and deaths than illicit drugs. To many young people this presents problems in understanding the rationale behind controlling drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy when their misuse contributes less overall harm to society than widely available drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. 6.9 In terms of death, illegal drugs amounted to 1,388 in 2003 compared to about 20,000 for alcohol and 100,000 for tobacco. These figures are from a hidden governmental revue of the drug laws hidden since the decision to re-classify cannabis back up to B in complete disregard to the facts and the claim that drug laws are based on relative harm.This revue was only made available after a freedom of information request. and it has taken Eight years of fighting Bull****, ignorance, bigotry and lies over which drugs are truly dangerous and which are a 16-19 billion pound a year earner for the industries involved in drug prohibition and who knows how much from dealing truly dangerous drugs to our children on every High Street in the nation!!
Philip Walsh ● 5513d