Is Alcohol Deadlier Than Drugs? This Is The Most Dangerous Drug! Drug Myths Exposed. Professor David Nutt.

29:41And in fact, the head of the MRC at the time was a friend and a guy also interested in drug policy, Colin Blakemore. And he funded a little conference to develop essentially what the harms of drugs are, assess what the harms of drugs are. It turns out there are 16 harms of drugs. There were nine harms to the user, things like whether you die, whether you get cancer, whether you go mad, you addicts, etc. And there are seven harms to society, to others. So we came up with those. We wrote definitions of them. And they are now the basis on which the Home Office makes decisions about drugs. But when you take those 16 variables and you score 20 drugs, as we did in that chart, and you put it all together, and then you weight each of the 16 criteria, it's very hard to know what the answer is going to be until the computer chugs away and then out it comes.

30:41And I was surprised when alcohol came out that was harmful. But quite a long way, in fact. Significantly so. And that's because of the use. 80 % of people in Britain drink something. I think every family in Britain has been damaged one way or the other by alcohol. Either someone drinks too much or someone's been driven over by a drunk driver or by someone who's been driven. So it's the widespread use of alcohol that makes it the most harmful. And if you just look at the harm to the user, then obviously crack cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, and they're more harmful to the user because they're more likely to kill you each time you use it.

31:18I think another one that really surprised me actually because I thought it came higher than I was expecting it to was cannabis. Yes. Cannabis kind of sat. Sat in the middle, didn't it? Sat in the middle and I was like, oh, I didn't think it would be that high up. What are the dangers of? Yeah, so cannabis is interesting because, yes, it's definitely higher up than mushrooms and LSD. But that's partly due to the fact that it is more widely used. Right. So we reckon 8 million people are using cannabis in the UK. So not as much as alcohol, but mushrooms, you know, lateral balaniviana or so. So the social hormones of cannabis are higher.

31:59And also because people use it, they often use it repeatedly. And so there's a higher risk of things like dependence. Would this be a good example of perhaps young people might start using cannabis because it's seen as the least problematic drug in people's minds? They kind of say it as the safest, you know, it's natural, it's weed, it's and then and then they don't have the mindset or the emotional maturity to understand themselves to use it appropriately. You know, we were saying 18 is quite a good age to start something, but lots of boys in particular, I think, start when they're much younger.

32:42Yeah, it's a really intriguing question. And I can answer it in different ways. I can answer it, and I've been asked this question a lot. What advice would you give to a child when it pleases not to drink or not to say callous? It would have to be not to drink. so many more people die teenagers drinking underage drinking is a is a terrifying thing because of the violence yes driving cars into trees etc when you hear yeah every christmas you hear two or three major accidents with four or five people killed in a car and i think particularly for young girls that put themselves in danger because they are yeah so if you want to stay alive it's better not to drink than use cannabis what i would say though is it using cannabis on a regular basis in your teens is generally not a good thing no so i do quite a lot of lectures to schools and kids say to me well you know what do i think about cannabis and i say well you know i think personally i say if you're going to do your you know when you're taking your a-level i wouldn't I wouldn't do your accounting A-level, stunned.

33:55But maybe in your art, I don't know. You know, I think if you're going to use cannabis, you've got to use it sensor, like all drugs. You need to know what the benefits or risks are. And if you get dependent, then you really should act. Correctly. You need to know it can cause dependence. There's no doubt about that. So I just want to get on to magic mushrooms because we were talking about that being put in Class A. Yes. And I was absolutely astonished to see LSD and mushrooms right at the bottom. Mushrooms being the least risky or that causes the least harm. That's it. The least harmful to you and to society.

34:34In fact, I think, would I be right in saying no harm to yourself? Well, nothing is completely harmless. Harmless. As I like to point out, between about five and ten people a year in Britain die of water poisoning. Right. Which brings so much. Okay. But at least a million people a year are using mushrooms. The government's own data going back the last 20 years says there might have been one death. Right. Yeah, that's the, I mean, you know, tiny, tiny, if you take that as obviously the most serious arm. Some people have panic attacks. Some people get anxious. during the trip. But the thing is that they tend only to be used once, twice, three, four times a year.

35:20So you don't get dependent. And if you don't like them, you don't use them. So that's why the safety is proven by this very, very wide use. The first clinical study we did with psilocybin, which is the active ingredient, magic mushroom juice, The first scientific study we did, we started in 2012. And to get a clinical study approved, you have to go to an organization called the MHRA, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority. And we'd like to do this study. And they said, well, how do you know that psilocyte is safe? Because you haven't done any animal research. You know, typically drugs, you've got to do animal research, toxicology.

36:08And we said, well, no, but we're an academic group and we can't afford to do that. And actually, I don't think we need to because we know from your own government data, there's a million people a year using it without harm. He said, OK, that seems sensible. Is it quite hard because psilocybin is a class A drug to get any research done or is it becoming easier? Totally. It's still annoying. It just got worse. Theresa May, I think, was angry that we started doing this research. And then she brought in an extra level of regulation. But let me just tell you, before I get on to her, let me tell you at the beginning.

36:46So in 2012, the study of psilocyte, we had to write a grant. We got a grant from the Medical Research Council in Britain. You know, it's a pioneer in a lot of medical studies. And I was surprised. You know, it's, I think this is quite radical, you know, illegal. And why did we get it? We got it because they made out a special call for helping people who depression was not responding to conventional treatments. So we said, well, we think based on brains, science, and also based on what some of the healthy volunteers have told us, it will improve mood. So we got the grant. That was a three-year grant.

37:29It took a year to get ethics approval. the ethics committee said well it's far too dangerous to kill psilocybin to depress people we said why and i said well they might go mad i said no no people they might kill themselves the third time i sat in this ethics committee and i thought this if they said no now it's gone so they i said okay well look what do you want and they said well you have to do a safety study and that means you have to give it to 12 people and then follow them up for six months and if If they don't die, then you can do a proper controlled study. But I thought, we have to say yes, because otherwise we wouldn't do anything.

38:09So we said yes, okay. So the main outcome for a study was whether they lived or died. Of course, they all did. And the secondary outcome was their move. But that was the easy bit. That's getting the drug, this controlled class A schedule-worn drug, there's only one place we could find in the world that would make it. It took 32 months. No! Of a 36-month grant. Just to get it? To get it. Oh, my God. I mean, and that's all because, well, it's a very dangerous drive, isn't it? I had to have a special safe put in my office, bolted to the floor on the wall with a camera to make sure I wasn't going in there and licking the mushrooms.

38:51And I said to the... Hang on, guys. There's a pharmacy here that's got heroin and fentanyl. Why can't I just put it there? And they say, oh, no, no, because there was a Schedule 2, there's a Schedule 1. I mean, if anyone's going to break in, they're not going to steal mushrooms. They're going to steal. But it's this kind of unthought, you know, the perverse consequences of regulation. So you know that to be true now, that psilocybin can help treat depression? Yeah. We've done two studies. not only have we done studies showing it treats depression that other treatments don't work for, but it works in a very different way in the brain.

39:36It's actually another way of lifting depression. It's an alternative. I mean, I think that's quite important, really. If you've got high blood pressure, you've got a choice of five different kinds of ways of lowering your blood pressure. And if one doesn't work, the other might. For depression and two psychedelics, you have one. Or ECT, which most people don't want. Now you've got two, and they work in different parts of the brain, on different receptors, at different speeds. Psychedelics work almost immediately. So they're potentially transformational. But we can use them clinically, except in research.

40:17And so we can only treat people who are in a study. And people, well, we haven't got money to keep. You can't keep doing studies because you know the answer. So you've got to change the regulations and get it to more people. I saw something where somebody had cancer. It was a young man. And he was really struggling with leaving his wife and child. And he talked through this experience that he'd had where he turned into a tree and his kid and his wife walked past and touched him. And it helped him so much realise that he would still be there even when he'd gone. That is what, I mean, historically, psychedelics were often used to help people come to terms with death and dying.

41:04I mean, generally not known, but actually, you know, the great intellect, the great writer about a psychedelic thing, his partner gave him LSD as he died. And to me, that's actually something I think should be available to anyone that wants it. And there have been studies there. There have been two controlled studies done in the States. People with terminal illnesses like motor neurone disease or cancer who've been given psilocybin and it's helped them come to terms with dying for exactly the reason you elucidated there. Under psychedelics, you see that you are part of the universe. But under psychedelics, you see there are much bigger people.

41:50People often talk about their bodies sort of atomizing and they're going into another universe, another place, often to somewhere like heaven or a mountain. And that realization that, you know, you never disappear, you know. And I suppose it's sort of a bit back to the old sort of Christian thing, you know, dust it does, ashes it was, ashes it was. You know, we come from the ground and we go, but we don't completely die. We just, we can figure it somehow. And people find that really quite reassuring. I mean, you talked about at the beginning about, you know, people are always going to take drugs recreationally, but let's not forget all the tribespeople that have taken it for centuries and centuries.

42:35It is just part of their lives, part of their religions, part of their ceremonies. And I think as I've got older, definitely since I've passed 50, I am seeking a more spiritual life like I'm looking for answers I'm understanding that death is coming for me it's a kind of different path that I go on and that's why I think I'm finding this knowledge so interesting and that I wish well I mean I suppose what I should ask you because you're the man that knows everything is what can we do to change this in our society here in this country What if you can't do it and you're the you are the committee that is supposed to be advising the government and they're not listening to you, then how do we do it?

43:29Well, I'm not on that committee anymore. No, I know. But I mean, you've been there. I've been there. And the answer is in one way, really simple. You just take drug policy out of politics. And your feeling towards this government, would they be brave enough to do that? Yeah, that's a tricky one. There are people in the Labour Party who are definitely on site. The Labour Chief Whitley is a trustee of my charity, Dr. Science. Very keen on policy change. There are several very outspoken members of the Labour Party who had mental health issues themselves. Alcoholism or bipolar disorder. and they're on my podcast and they want change.

44:16And they've got a big enough majority to do it and get away with it. The question is whether... Here's Starmer, who of course is... It's interesting, you've got Starmer now, you've got Kamala Harris in America, you've got people who've come to political power as a result of incarcerating lots of people. I would hope he was a big enough man to say, okay, you know, that policy wasn't my policy. I was, you know, head of the CBS. I didn't develop. I was just doing my duty as a civil servant. I would hope he would realise that actually current drug policy does so much more harm than good, particularly to disadvantaged communities.

44:57Exactly. And isn't the proof just overwhelming, though? Isn't it completely ridiculous that it's not happening? I don't understand after everything that you've said, and the proof is there. Why isn't it changing? Well, I think it is because of elections. It's very noticeable. The drugs did not figure in the last election. What's Portugal doing right? What is their policy? Well, 20 years ago now, the Portuguese realised that they had a rising age crisis. And they had an awful lot of people in prison. for drug offenses. And they did something really radical. They said, well, you can't put everyone in prison, despite what I think some politicians would like.

45:45You've got to have a professional policy. So why don't we treat drug use as a health problem? So basically, they stop. You arrest someone who's using heroin. I've got heroin in possession of heroin. So rather than putting them in prison, you say, we're going to treat you. We're going to have an option. You know, you can basically go on a treatment program or you can do crazy service. So we take away the enormous burden of criminalization. Once you criminalize someone, it's almost impossible for them to get anywhere in life other than a menial drug. And if you don't want a menial drug, you deal drugs because you're going to get a decent income.

46:26So they took away the stigma of criminality, put vast numbers of people into treatment, managed to reduce the police budget, reduce the... Really? Yeah, absolutely. They reduced the police budget. They reduced the number of people in prison. And an amazing statistic, in the first 15 years, I haven't seen the 20-year date yet, but the first 15-year date of Portugal, they reduced deaths from heroin to a third of what they were before. Wow. And they also managed to massively reduce the HIV rates. over exactly the same time course, which is the time course pretty much of the last Tory government, 15 years, we have doubled death rates from hell because we have basically continued prosecuting people and we have massively disinvested in treatment programs.

47:23So year on year, over the last four years, we have broken, each year, We've broken the record for the number of people dying of opiates. What, compared to all other European countries? No, compared to ourselves. Oh, we're just going up and up every year. Four years in a row, we've broken a new... I mean, that in itself is... I mean, sure, that actually is a condemnation of the policy. How many other countries do you think are doing it right in Europe? And surely aren't they just kind of glowing examples of what we should be doing? Well, yes, the Netherlands have done it right through very long time, particularly cannabis.

48:03Amazingly, what the Dutch did, as I think most people know, was they decided to allow in some townships, if the mayor, chief of police, and a supplier wanted to, they could set up a coffee shop. The coffee shop didn't sell coffee, the coffee shop sold cannabis. It's tightly regulated. people so tightly regulated you couldn't get alcohol in the coffee shop you couldn't get coffee in the coffee shop and you couldn't smoke tobacco in the coffee shop interestingly try to break the link between smoking cannabis and tobacco and they did that because they knew their kids would want to use cannabis as we spoke in earlier about they just wanted to do something different pre the law a bit but they wanted them to get cannabis without having to go to a dealer because they knew and we know if you go to a dealer for cannabis in this country almost always is that they will try to sell you heroin or crystal at the same time or crack.

49:00And they wanted to separate those markets. And it was amazingly successful. They had massively lower levels of heroin use in their teenagers than we have. And surprisingly, they had actually lower levels of cannabis use as well for two reasons. One is if it's legal, well, it's not so true. Yeah, it's not so cool, is it? It's cool, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also, you know, the cannabis they were getting was kind of certified cannabis. It's not laced with anything. Not laced with other things. And it's not, you have a choice, whereas 95 % of all cannabis on the streets of Britain today is skunk.

49:39So it's 50 % THC, which is a more dangerous form of cannabis than the traditional sort of herbal cannabis that used to have resin with 5%, 6 % THC. Is there an idea that you could decriminalise all drugs and that would have the same effect of people? Yes, exactly. Now, the WHO and the United Nations have almost unanimously, all the different sections have asked for that policy. Oh, really? But we need to be quite explicit is decriminalization of drug use. Right. Obviously not dealing. Exactly. Yeah. That's right. Because criminalizing drug users, as we mentioned just a minute ago, if you criminalize them, what can they do?

50:34Well, the best thing, you know, to make money, the best thing they do is deal drugs. So you don't want to create that market. and so that is a kind of I think most people in most branches of you know obviously there are countries like Russia and China they like executing people but in most countries decriminalization of personal possession is seen as their way forward and a couple of American states have started doing that. Have they? Yeah but you do run into a problem decriminalization does need to be as was done in Portugal does need to be done in the context of help. You can't just say to someone, well, we're not going to prosecute you when they're using vast amounts of drug.

51:16You've got to help them get off the drug as well. So you need a joined-up policy. And unfortunately, the American states that have done or the townships haven't provided adequate care. Exactly. Classic American problem. That health care is something that the individual owns. It's not something that the state offers. Yeah, I mean, and health care in America is prohibitively expensive. and if you're an addict, you're not going to have any money left. You know, that's a classic. Exactly. You spend it all on drugs. What was fascinating was you were talking about all the prisons that had closed down.

51:49It makes sense that you close down a prison and you open a treatment centre with much more positive effect and churning out healthier people who aren't going to go on and recommit or get caught on drugs again. I quickly just want to go back to ecstasy. Yes. you talk a little bit about how governments really hated this idea or that people in government really hated this idea of a drug because it was actually called empathy. Yes, we talk about that. Yeah. We have to talk about that. I mean, ecstasy is a really classic example of how the media and then politicians can completely distort the value of a drug.

52:36So ecstasy's chemical name is MDMA, all right? MDMA was rediscovered by a man called Sheldon. He was a chemist who was making all sorts of different amphetamines, partly so that the US government could have standards to work with, and partly because I was interested in them. And he made MDMA and he said, wow, this is remarkable. This is different from other amphetamines. He said this gave me a clarity of thought and a sort of sense of inner well-being that no other amphetamine had done. Amphetamine said to G, you are for me. I didn't. And he said this was pretty different. And he said he gave it to his wife when his wife was a therapist.

53:22He said, wow, this is amazing. I'm back in love with you, Sasha. that we should be using this for couples therapy. And it was legal, that was legal, and he made lots of it, and she dispersed it around her friends who were therapists, and it was quite widely used. Thousands of couples were treated, were put into a couple, into a session to help them heal their marriages under MDMA, which makes perfect sense because you take an MDMA, and it makes you feel warm and loving to other people, including someone you might have been rhyming with yesterday. and it was called empathy because that's what it does.

53:59I mean, when I heard that, I thought that's such a lovely name for it because I think that is exactly what it achieves. If the name had not been changed, it wouldn't have been banned, but it was legal. A club owner in Houston, I think in Texas, discovered it, heard about it, They said, oh, we have a legal amphetamine. Let's sell it. Started using it. People said, we love this. And he said, yeah, but we can dance. It's actually, you know, it is like an ecstasy. And so he changed the name to ecstasy. Got to Ibiza. The rave started. And there's nothing that the establishment, the old white male establishment of both the media and politicians, hate more than young people having ecstasy, because they'd never had it.

54:58It's kind of a jealousy thing. Absolutely. It's a sort of deep-seated resentment of people having something that they haven't ever can have. They don't want to punish them. And then you find out that it doesn't cause the kind of harm. Oh, the story's even worse. Yeah. The story's really worse, because they knew they couldn't ban it on the grounds of harm. because it wasn't causing harm. So they created harms. How do you mean? How would they do that? Well, they funded scientists. The science of MDMA is some of the worst science, maybe is the worst science ever done. They funded scientists to trawl around and find evidence that MDMA harms you.

55:48Now, there were some deaths I mentioned earlier about the hypothermia and that, you know, but, you know, way fewer deaths than you might get, you know, certainly get with opiates or with alcohol, for instance. But they had to find something else. And there's a truly horrific experiment where this particular group in Johns Hopkins, they decided to give monkeys ecstasy in the same way, they said, in the same way as it's used in raves. So they gave these monkeys, they gave these monkeys supposedly ecstasy, and they put them in a room overnight with flashing lights, and they played a lot of rock music to them.

56:37And the next day, some of the monkeys were pretty ill. And they killed them, and they cut their brains up. Look, there's damage to their brains. Ecstasy causes brain damage. And we read this paper. We said, well, it's clearly wrong because if it was true, people wouldn't be walking home after the braves. They'd be crawling and they'd be dying and they're not. And there was a big scientific outcry about this paper. This paper was published in the leading American journal called Science. And it was all, I thought, that's one page, you know, exorcist. It was obviously wrong. And eventually they were forced to go back and check the results.

57:13And they hadn't given them NDNA. they kept giving up crystal meth whether they say it was an accident it was probably an accident but the fact is the scientists were prepared to believe rubbish data because it served the political purpose and that narrative carries on people still saying we're using MDMA therapeutically but people are saying will it cause blame them and the answer is probably not if you take the right amount in a safe environment. Could you tell me about your charity? Yes. For drug science. So when I was booted out, sacked by Alan Johnson in 2009, a couple of days later I got an email from a guy who said, I'm Toby Jackson, never heard of him.

58:03And he said, I kind of write computer programs and it helps me make money on the stock exchange. I said, oh, that's great. He said, I would like to fund you. I'm outraged by the fact you've been sacked. I would like to fund you to set up an independent ACMD. I was on the advisory council at Mischief's Drugs, helping the government make sensible decisions, supposedly about drugs, failing. He said, why don't we set up an independent committee? I'll give you the money that they have to do that. So I did. And for the first three years, he funded. I set up the charity. It's called Drug Science. And it's actually probably the leading place in the world where you can go and get the truth about drugs.

58:44because we've got no political pressure. We can say anything we like. We can tell the truth about it. Our strapline is the truth about drugs. And if you buy the book, Drugs Without Hot Air, yes. Just going to hold that up again. Proceeds got to support the charity. So Drugs Without Hot Air is basically what you just talked about. It is the just plain truth with no hidden agendas, no reasons to lie. We just want to tell you the harm and the good or the fun that you can have on all of these drugs, what they are. There's lots of charts in here. Like you said, I think every parent should read this book.

59:17You've got great advice for parents, how to talk to your kids in there. But also I think it's quite good that you've set this up because it means that you are in place for when the government does decide to take drug policy out of government. Yes, indeed. Would we accept a commission to run drug policy? I think we, yes, if the conditions were right, I think we would be very interested in helping them. there's one more thing i want to talk to you about before we finish very quickly and that is um the limit so i think it's 14 units a week and i often laugh because i see friends and i think you are literally going i'm going to keep drinking till i get to 14 like like they're not happy unless they've done their 14 units because it feels like i keep going no that's the maximum amount that is kind of good for you but you've just said that no amount of alcohol or the who show says that what's your what's your take on that and can i ask you about legal limits for driving because i read something very interesting that you wrote about the different legal limits for driving and how we think that the legal limit is fine for us to drive but in fact it is it has quite a profound effect on your driving at a much lower amount yes so alcohol limits yeah that's a hugely controversial topic isn't it and it varies across almost every country in the world So let's just look at the health aspects to start with.

1:00:44Currently in the UK, recommendations are 14 units a week for both men and women. Used to be, 20 years ago, it was 28 for men, 21 for women. Wow. It's been brought down. It's been brought down to 14 and 14. Now, it's really important to emphasize a week. Because I remember when I was interviewing Adrian Childs. Hugo Day. And he came and he said, well, yeah, David, I was all right on Monday. I managed to stick to 12 units. Adrian, it's a week. Oh, my God. In fact, he wrote about it in his book. He's a lovely guy. So it's not a day and it's not a target. Yes, that's what I think. It's not a target.

1:01:31But if you stick to 14 units or less a week and do not drink it all in one go, i.e. don't save it up for Saturday nights or Friday or Saturday night. If you space it out, the best way to drink 14 units is to have two or three days when you don't drink at all. So, let's deliver a recovery. If you stick within 14 units, men or women, your risks of coming to harm from alcohol are very low. Okay. Go beyond that, then this is peculiar what we call exponential curve. As you go beyond 14, it's up to go steeper, steeper. And if you go up to 100 or more a week, it's a massive, massive risk of harm from alcohol.

1:02:20So, yes, stick to under 14. Alcohol will give you the benefits, I presume, you're looking for it, with very low risk of heart. And driving? So driving is, yeah, alcohol impairs driving. It impairs driving in two ways. It impairs driving for people because it makes people think they're a better driver than they are. There was a brilliant study done of London bus drivers in the 1950s. It was one of the very first studies that actually looked at scientifically the impact of alcohol on driving. And they had these two bollards. And they gave bus drivers alcohol. And they found that the majority of bus drivers, when they were drunk, would try to get through.

1:03:02They'd underestimate the width of the bollards and they would struggle. They'd run into them. But there was a small group, the very anxious, introverted people. They'd be less shaky. They could actually drive more accurately on alcohol. Which, of course, is another factor in why, where people drink. I mean, darts players, they're allowed to drink alcohol because it makes them much less, it takes away the tremor. Whereas Olympic athletes aren't. I didn't know that's why darts players were allowed to drink alcohol. It helps with the tremor. That's so funny. Well, say they're not allowed to. The reason it's not banned.

1:03:38Yes. Whereas there are other sports. I mean, I think the pentathlon where you have to shoot, they don't allow you to use alcohol because it would reduce the tremor. No, that would make absolute sense. So alcohol can have, you know, it's another example. It's not just sociability benefits. It can have some other minor benefits. But judgment, once you get to the limit, the 80 milligrams per cent limit we have in Britain, it doesn't mean that you're safe to drive. It just means that you're safer than if you were above it. And the question is, what will be a level at which there was almost no increased risk of accidents?

1:04:16because 80 milligrams, the current drink driving limit, more than doubles your risk of an accident. I mean, that's mad, isn't it? I would agree with you. It is. That's why the Scots recently brought it down from 80 to 50. Other countries have done that, and we've seen that that has reduced risk. Some countries have brought it down to 20, and that would make the most sense. Under 20, for almost any driver, there's not a major impact, except for very young drivers. Young drivers are more affected by alcohol than older drivers, probably because they're less tolerant to alcohol and probably because they're also more impulsive.

1:04:54Listen, David, this has just been amazing. I knew you were going to be fantastically interesting, but I had no idea you'd be so lovely. So thank you. Thank you very much. Very much. I've really enjoyed talking to you. I have too. And when we have our menopausal product, call me. Bring me back. Call me. Yes, I will. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. Thank you.