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Nov 2010 Decision Analysis
Drug Harms in the UK: A Multicriteria Decision Analysis
Nutt DJ, King LA, Phillips LD — Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs / Imperial College London
Published in The Lancet
A committee scored 20 drugs across 16 harm criteria (9 to the user, 7 to others). Alcohol ranked most harmful overall (72/100), ahead of heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54); classic psychedelics and MDMA scored near the bottom of the list. The ranking correlated poorly with the UK's actual legal drug classification — a mismatch this paper is most often cited for.
Read the Full Paper at The Lancet