Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Alcohol's Worse For You

I was interested to read an article that's just been published by the news stating that alcohol may more damaging to your health than what some drugs are.  The report that was carried out, was published in the Lancet Medical Journal.

A table was created by a number of leading scientists and was drawn up by teams from the University of Bristol and the Medical Research Council, and they looked at alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.  This table went on to show that alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy, and LSD.

This is a new unofficial classification table - and the system was created to show what was more harmful to human health, and there were a few surprises, and some of what you already suspected.

Heroin came out on top of this list which was followed by cocaine which was probably the way you suspected it to be, but as the table unfolds you find that alcohol comes in as the fifth most harmful substance for your health with cigarettes coming in as the ninth.  So according to this table alcohol is worse for you than cigarettes.  Cannabis was eleventh, LSD came in at fourteenth and ecstasy at eighteenth according to this new unofficial classification table.

I found it hard to believe some of these statistics, but who am to question these leading scientists who are at the top of their profession and the people who have carried out proper and recorded research.  And I'm 100% sure that the Lancet Medical Journal would not have published it if it was rubbish.

I know in this country there are a lot of alcohol related problems with binge drinking along with many other alcohol related problems.  But when you read this report properly, it is not about what you might do with a drink in you - especially if you can't hold it.  The system was to show what danger certain substance pose to human health such as lung cancer, hardening of the arteries and other health related problems.

I doubt that this table will make any difference to the way we already lead our lives.  And I know for a fact that the government is not going to tell us that alcohol is worse for us than cigarettes, because it makes a fortune out of us in taxes - but I must say I always thought that cigarettes were worse for our health than what alcohol is.

It may be time for the government to inform people who drink what the dangers are involved to their health, because just now there is no information given out on the subject of alcohol and the dangers related to peoples health.  Coming fifth in this table should set alarm bells ringing in the medical profession because it comes so close to heroin and cocaine - which I found hard to believe.

This report is an interesting report, but what will happen to the new unofficial classification table?  Will our government take any notice of it, will they ever see it?  I doubt it as long as they continue to make money through taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

We are all responsible for own health, so it's up to us to decide if we want to drink or smoke.  Cigarettes have a health warning all over the packet, so if drink is so bad for our health it may be time for our government to inform us of the health risks associated with it.

Written by Andrew Murphy 23 March 2007