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 A new study comes to break all the previous criteria over the drugs ranking and their harmfulness, placing alcohol as more harmful than heroin or crack.

Scientists from independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) studied the dangers to both individual and to wider society and concluded that heroin, crack and methylamphetamine were the most harmful drugs to individuals, but alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others.

The report, co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009, ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.
The results fly in the face of long-held opinions about which drugs pose the greatest dangers, with the authors claiming they demonstrate "the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm."

"They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol... is a valid and necessary public health strategy," said the authors.