Alcohol 'should be considered a Class A drug' say experts

Alcohol is so dangerous to health that it should be considered a class A drugs, experts have warned.

The amount of physical and social harm caused by drink means it should be ranked alongside class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine, it is claimed.

Cigarettes would end up as class B - like amphetamines and barbiturates, according to a new league table.

But cannabis would remain ranked as class C, which critics have blamed for sending the wrong message to young people and boosting misuse.

British experts have drawn up a new 'rational scale' of harm caused by legal and illegal drugs following criticism that the existing system is not scientifically based.

The current UK Misuse of Drugs Act segregates drugs into three classes - A,B and C - that are intended to reflect the dangers of each drug, with class A being most harmful and class C being least harmful.

But a report published in The Lancet medical journal claims this system is "arbitrary" and non-scientific.

It proposes a league table of 20 harmful substances that puts the "socially accepted" drugs of alcohol and tobacco in a similar category to street drugs.

Alcohol was ranked 4th and tobacco 9th - just behind heroin and cocaine in first and second place. They were judged more harmful than cannabis - ranked 11th - and substantially more dangerous than the class A drug Ecstasy which was ranked 18th.

The team behind the report, which included forensic, police and medical experts, said Ecstasy was the cause of death for only a few 'unfortunate' people each year, compared with thousands dying of drink-related problems.

Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, who led the team, said the current system was "not fit for purpose" and was not helping deter young people from using drugs, as they did not trust the message.

Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, said "We hope that policy makers will take note of the fact that the resulting ranking of drugs differs substantially from their classification in the Misuse of Drugs Act and that alcohol and tobacco are judged more harmful than many illegal substances."

They said it was not for them to propose sanctions that should be attached to the new ranking, although they accepted alcohol use was unlikely to be criminalised after the US experience of prohibition in the 1920s which led to massive bootlegging and crime.

The new research has already been used by a Parliamentary committee investigating the issue, and was the basis of a report from the RSA earlier this month calling for the current drug classification system to be scrapped.

But former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warned it was "worryingly complacent" because the growing problem of drug abuse - 325,000 adult problem drug users - might be made worse, along with drug-related crime.

The Home Office has already indicated that Home Secretary John Reid has no intention of scrapping the present system, although it was briefly considered by his predecessor Charles Clarke.