Alcohol And Tobacco Now Make The Top 10 List Of Harmful Drugs

In research published recently in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University found that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy. This new landmark research proposes a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society.

For the first time medical research now comes to loggerheads with the legal classification of dangerous drugs. Whilst alcohol and tobacco are still legally available, medical research and public opinion are now tipping the scales towards making these substances illegal.

Is it not ironic that each year around the world there are more deaths from booze and cigarettes, than there are from the so called illegal drugs all put together?

You can at this moment be pulled in for possession of marijuana and ecstasy, yet you can openly go out on the town, get blind drunk and tip your hat to the policeman on the way home!

Where’s the logic?

Alcohol ruins lives (not for all I will admit) and smoking saps the very life from the people who use it; long term it kills more people than die in auto accidents every year. Its effects fill the hospital wards, split families apart and cause so much social harm, that it makes you wonder just why it is allowed to be sold openly.

There are however economical and political implications and it is easy to see why keeping the masses subdued would be an advantage to any government with its head screwed on right. Add to this the unrest that would come from making brewery and tobacco factory workers unemployed, the catastrophic monetary loss from duty on these items and you start to get an idea of just what a hot potato this subject is.

Change will not come overnight; there is too much vested interest in it for any government to take the lead in implementing such policies. Change will only occur when society on the whole comprehends the dangers of these substances and starts to reject their use. Then and only then will its grasp on society be released, for then it will not be a viable commercial market.

So how can we play our part in pushing for this change?

I feel it will only come from setting an example that others will follow, we’ve seen it with tobacco, where now it is not socially acceptable to smoke in certain places. Alcohol however is still viewed as a right of passage and a release from the pounding of life, it has not yet got to that stage where it has lost its social cool. We still see Ads on TV and see the posters stuck to billboards the length and breadth of our countries. Unlike nicotine its still conceptualised as a normal thing to do, so entrenched in our traditions and social gatherings, its going to take a massive change in identity to make it unpopular.

In the mean time we are left with the fallout of what these socially acceptable drugs leave in their wake, the misery, the harm, the heartbreak. The only way forward is to see just how cigarettes have now become the bad boy of social habits, to smoke in certain places makes you a social outcast, it is now not socially acceptable. If we took this premise with alcohol just how long could it survive as an acceptable drug?

I foresee a day when the first legal actions are called against the breweries, just the same way it happened for the tobacco giants. The claimants won, it set a precedence and proved once and for all legally, that this substance caused harm.

Perhaps the day has come where we can personally become the pioneers of this change?

If Alcohol has affected you or your family in such a way, that you feel the time is right to help make a substantial change to your society; then make that conscious decision to take alcohol out of your life and set an example that others can follow. Your actions today, will make tomorrow a more promising place for all of us to be apart of.

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

Richard’s personal struggle with alcohol spanned a period of over thirty years, ending only when he chanced upon a highly innovative program that changed his life. His passionate style of writing now enables people all around the world, to discover a life without addiction. www.kudzu-cure.info

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