The BBC's home editor, Mark Easton, writes in his blog that the study involved 16 criteria, including a drug's affects on users' physical and mental health, social harms including crime, "family adversities" and environmental damage, economic costs and "international damage".
"Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm," the paper says.
"They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Haase: The obvious flaw in data... the most available and acceptable will always be the most abused and costly to society - Dahhh?
Arguing that one proven harmful drug is better than the other only proves that stupidity is an abundant resource.