we’ll drink to that. wait, what?

A research study led by Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and published Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet created a new ranking of drugs based on the actual danger they pose to society and found to the shock of many that both alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than many illegal drugs such as marijuana.

“Hey,” you may be saying to yourself, “in the interest of fairness perhaps they should relax the penalties on some of these other drugs.”

Whoa, easy there big guy. Just step away from the bong, get your hand out of the Fiddle Faddle, and grab some Visine.

According to Wayne Hall, of the University of Queensland in Australia these rankings clearly “suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal (ie, tobacco and alcohol).”

But you probably saw that coming.

How did alcohol and tobacco end up being ranked as intrinsically more dangerous than not only marijuana but also LSD and ecstasy? One of the main criteria used to determine a drug’s ranking was its current impact on society.

Of course, the study’s authors noted (full text here, registration required) that this is spurious as “direct comparison of the scores for tobacco and alcohol with those of the other drugs is not possible since the fact that they are legal could affect their harms in various ways, especially through easier availability.” 

However, that presented a problem. Excluding alcohol and tobacco from the results would produce a research paper lacking the most critical element driving modern scientific inquiry: The discovery of new and exciting headlines. Compare:

With alcohol and tobacco included in the results:

Study: Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Drugs!

Wow!

Without alcohol and tobacco included in the results:

Study: Ketamine and Benzodiazepines Worse Than Buprenorphine! 

Zzzzzzz.

Fortunately, one of the more important innovations in social sciences research over the past several decades has been the rising primacy of conclusions over evidence and so the report ignores the fact that a direct comparison is not possible, and instead closes with: “The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use.”

Professor David Nutt doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase, “not possible.” 

No, seriously, he doesn’t.

Dispensing with the annoying constrictions of evidence-based conclusions opens up whole new fields of inquiry and could be used, say, to prove that bullets are much more dangerous to society than nuclear weapons since bullets have killed far more people. (Just imagine what that could do for fishing with explosives enthusiasts!)

The rankings themselves were scientifically determined using the rigorous clinical method of “asking people stuff.” Since “asking people stuff” lacks the inscrutability necessary for this approach to sound credible, the authors described this process as using “delphic principles” in which “participants were asked to score each substance” on a 4-point scale in an approach that “incorporates the best knowledge of experts in diverse disciplines.”

Asking people stuff.

More specifically, two groups of people were asked to record their opinions regarding these various substances: Law enforcement officials and psychiatrists. 

While this might strike some as an odd way to conduct a study, most people will surely agree that teaming up cops with psychiatrists would make for an excellent television drama: 

Law and Disorder. “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the psychiatrists who explore the underlying motivations of the offenders which often involve unresolved feelings of inadequacy in their relationships with their mothers.”

“These are their stories.” 

“Dun-dun”

What might thwart attempts to use the results of this study to further regulate alcohol and tobacco? Again, from Wayne Hall: “The wealthy, well organized, powerful, and politically connected alcohol and tobacco industries will be able to resist policies that would more effectively reduce the harms that their products cause.”

But we think he meant that as a criticism.

J.