Psychiatrist Says Ecstasy Less Harmful Than Horse Riding, Controversy Ensues

A bit of a row has cropped up in the UK over a paper in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, authored by David Nutt, a psychiatrist at the University of Bristol and head of the UK's Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse. In the paper, Nutt created a fictional addiction called "equasy," or addiction to riding horses, and detailed its risks. Apparently, 1 of every 350 horse riders will suffer a brain injury or death from riding horses whereas only 1 in 10,000 people exposed to Ecstasy (aka MDMA) will. Horse riding is legal, X isn't. Nutt's argument is that, viewed against culturally-acceptable activities such as rugby and motorcycling, illegal drugs aren't so dangerous.

It's a fair enough argument, as far as it goes, but a furor erupted both because Nutt is advising the British government on reclassifying classified drugs (they have a system similar to the US's drug scheduling system) and because, according to the BBC, he wrote the following in his paper:

"Drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life. There is not much difference between horse-riding and ecstasy."

Nutt was criticized for trivializing drug use and was the object of comment in the House of Commons. The only weird thing is that I cannot find such a statement in his paper (pdf here). It's there by analogy, but that precise quote is not. I wonder where the BBC got it from.

All the same, Nutt's argument is an interesting one, an approach I've used in the past when taking on Nanny Statists who want to ban risky activities such as smoking as a means of protecting citizens from themselves. Last year on KUOW-FM, I proposed a ban on mountain climbing because it's risky and we've got to protect the public from risk, even the risk of seemingly healthy activities. People do die and suffer serious injuries climbing in the Cascades each year. Sadly, the archive of my appearance on the radio is no longer live on the station's website.

I was being tongue in cheek, of course (I love hiking and mountain climbing and wouldn't want either banned), and so was Nutt. But it is interesting that his remarks stirred so much controversy. I wonder what would happen in the US if a doc authored a paper on the dangers of Ecstasy versus football.

Or if a doc wrote a paper comparing the risks of Zyprexa versus Ecstasy.

Just to be clear, I have no personal experience with X and am not advocating its use or trivializing anything. I do think, however, that MDMA is one of those molecules that merits further research into its possible benefits as a therapeutic drug. I've made similar noises about ketamine, marijuana, and mushrooms, which all seem to have some level of therapeutic purpose but are illegal.

(Via the ever-intruiging Before You Take That Pill.)