Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

Product Information

The dangers of illegal drugs are well known and rarely disputed, but how harmful are alcohol and tobacco by comparison? Start telling your kids about drugs from an early age and be prepared to discuss your drinking and smoking with them.

He was criticised and eventually fired for being rather too vocal about the fact that the government consistently ignored the advice of the ACMD and allowed political considerations to trump the evidence, and for pointing out some inconvenient truths about relative harms; that alcohol and tobacco are both more dangerous than many illegal drugs, and that horse-riding is considerably more dangerous than taking ecstasy.Surveying the state of medical knowledge around various currently prohibited substances – from hard drugs to LSD, cannabis, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and poppers – Professor Nutt ranks their potential harms and benefits (e.g. in treating anxiety, depression or pain) leading him to challenge the distorted logic of a blanket ban on anything psychoactive except alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. A clear and reasonable perspective on a complicated and controversial area from an expert unafraid of talking sense to power about addictive drugs, legal or illegal. * Ed Bullmore, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and Author of The Inflamed Mind * From the Publisher: The dangers of illegal drugs are well known and rarely disputed, but how harmful are alcohol and tobacco by comparison? What are we missing by banning medical research into magic mushrooms, LSD and cannabis? Can they be sources of valuable treatments?

This is a book aimed at the general public. Reviewing a book on drugs as an addiction specialist had the prospect of being an unrewarding experience. Simplistic, reductionist arguments presented in a journalistic style leaving you angry and despondent. However, having David Nutt as the author offered the prospect of something different and as the title suggests, ‘without the hot air’. This was first published in 2012 and has been on my “to read” list ever since. I think, but can’t be certain, that I’ve sat through a tall by the author at some point in that period—though it may have been someone talking about him! This, the most comprehensive critique of the 1971 Act yet, rests on the combined learning of leading medical, scientific, psychiatric, academic, legal, drug safety and other specialists to provide sound reasons to re-think half a century of bad law. This book covers various aspects of drug use: how drugs work, how harmful they are, what addiction is, what treatments are available and so on. It covers alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs as well as the illegal ones.Disclaimer. I'm not a particular fan of drug use but I don't regard people who intentionally take things, whether beer, whisky or mephedrone, to make them feel better, are criminals.