• Question: What is the most harmful drug?

    Asked by chloejazmine to katy, Richard, Anais, Lauren, Stuart on 11 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by joshiesqaushy, JimBobbleBrown, mimitilly919, Blackheart, racheal.
    • Photo: Katy Kellett

      Katy Kellett answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      In my experience the most dangerous drug I have seen in heroin. Very nasty drug.

    • Photo: Richard Friend

      Richard Friend answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      I couldn’t tell you for definite which the most harmful drug is, but the worst ones I’ve worked with have all been anti cancer medicines. Because of the way they work they’ve got to be really toxic, and people with cancer need medicine to get better, so people like me need to work in labs so they get that medicine. It’s not very glamorous, but it’s important.

    • Photo: Lauren Laing

      Lauren Laing answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      This will depend on the drug, all chemicals work in different ways.
      Your body is maintained in a healthy state by complex, but essential processes. Some chemicals interact with these pathways, upsetting their balance and so affecting your health. How poisonous a chemical is depends on many things, this can include how it gets into your body: through your skin? Directly into an open wound? Inhalation? Through the mouth when you eat or drink?
      How poisonous a chemical is also depends on the amount of the chemical entering your body, some chemicals are good for you in small doses, but bad for you in very high doses. Also, the rate at which your body can remove the chemical will affect how poisonous it is.

      It is hard to determine the most harmful drug! Although drugs like heroin can cause bad side effects and addictions, some scientists would argue that nicotine and even more so, alcohol are much more harmful!!! Professor David Nutt spends a lot of his time trying to raise awareness about some of the common misconceptions of drugs, and how alcohol causes harm to the most people in the UK!

      Here is an interesting blog post: http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/whats-most-dangerous-drug-world-according-science

      In a study by David Nutt he concludes that mostly due to its harm to others – including the wider economy – alcohol was considered to be by far the most dangerous.

    • Photo: Stuart Atkinson

      Stuart Atkinson answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      If you mean the damage is does to people, its additive potential and the harm it can do to society then it must be alcohol. It’s odd that most of us don’t think of it as a drug, but that’s just because it’s legal and there’s loads of it about.

      Second is probably tobacco. Both of these cause incredible drains on the NHS resources, and any money put into reducing their abuse has got to be money well spent.

      A recent survey said that 50% of hospital A&E visits were alcohol related!

      Of other (prescription-only or illegal) drugs, the most dangerous is probably heroin, primarily because of the ease of overdosing. Also in this list would be cocaine, and barbiturate tranquilisers, again very easy to overdose on.

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