What is very regularly invoked in this debate is the precautionary principle, which is that, if you're not sure about a drug harm, rank it high, make all drugs class A and get rid of the problem.
Sure enough, Professor Nutt concluded the programme by saying he would move hash to the bottom of his harm index, ranking it as safer than all of heroin, crack, meth, cocaine, tobacco, amphetamine, GHB, Benzobiazepines, ketamine and methadone.
Their recurring lament was that lost in the loud debate over the budget in Washington were the countless ways that sequestration harms rank-and-file soldiers, civilians and families.
Several critics have pointed out that the deferred compensation proposal could have the effect of actually harming rank-and-file workers, such as those at startup companies, where deferred compensation is a common practice to make up for initially low salaries.
Demos has created a "harm index" which ranks the impact of different types of debt according to their financial, emotional and social consequences, based on the experiences of people who have encountered each type of borrowing.
Researchers led by Professor David Nutt, a former chief drugs adviser to the British government, asked drug-harm experts to rank 20 drugs (legal and illegal) on 16 measures of harm to the user and to wider society, such as damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs and crime.
"Despite our best efforts to ensure to a near-certainty that no non-combatants will be killed or injured, sometimes strikes do result in harm to the innocent," said Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
