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Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project

In 2013, illegal drug use was responsible for 1.8% of years of life lost in the European Union, alcohol was responsible for 8.2% and tobacco for 18.2%, imposing economic burdens in excess of 2.5% of GDP. No single European country has optimal governance structures for reducing the harm done by nicot...

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Autores principales: Anderson, Peter, Berridge, Virginia, Conrod, Patricia, Dudley, Robert, Hellman, Matilda, Lachenmeier, Dirk, Lingford-Hughes, Anne, Miller, David, Rehm, Jürgen, Room, Robin, Schmidt, Laura, Sullivan, Roger, Ysa, Tamyko, Gual, Antoni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: F1000Research 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5381624/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28435669
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.10860.1
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author Anderson, Peter
Berridge, Virginia
Conrod, Patricia
Dudley, Robert
Hellman, Matilda
Lachenmeier, Dirk
Lingford-Hughes, Anne
Miller, David
Rehm, Jürgen
Room, Robin
Schmidt, Laura
Sullivan, Roger
Ysa, Tamyko
Gual, Antoni
author_facet Anderson, Peter
Berridge, Virginia
Conrod, Patricia
Dudley, Robert
Hellman, Matilda
Lachenmeier, Dirk
Lingford-Hughes, Anne
Miller, David
Rehm, Jürgen
Room, Robin
Schmidt, Laura
Sullivan, Roger
Ysa, Tamyko
Gual, Antoni
author_sort Anderson, Peter
collection PubMed
description In 2013, illegal drug use was responsible for 1.8% of years of life lost in the European Union, alcohol was responsible for 8.2% and tobacco for 18.2%, imposing economic burdens in excess of 2.5% of GDP. No single European country has optimal governance structures for reducing the harm done by nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol, and existing ones are poorly designed, fragmented, and sometimes cause harm. Reporting the main science and policy conclusions of a transdisciplinary five-year analysis of the place of addictions in Europe, researchers from 67 scientific institutions addressed these problems by reframing an understanding of addictions.  A new paradigm needs to account for evolutionary evidence which suggests that humans are biologically predisposed to seek out drugs, and that, today, individuals face availability of high drug doses, consequently increasing the risk of harm.  New definitions need to acknowledge that the defining element of addictive drugs is ‘heavy use over time’, a concept that could replace the diagnostic artefact captured by the clinical term ‘substance use disorder’, thus opening the door for new substances to be considered such as sugar. Tools of quantitative risk assessment that recognize drugs as toxins could be further deployed to assess regulatory approaches to reducing harm. Re-designed governance of drugs requires embedding policy within a comprehensive societal well-being frame that encompasses a range of domains of well-being, including quality of life, material living conditions and sustainability over time; such a frame adds arguments to the inappropriateness of policies that criminalize individuals for using drugs and that continue to categorize certain drugs as illegal. A health footprint, modelled on the carbon footprint, and using quantitative measures such as years of life lost due to death or disability, could serve as the accountability tool that apportions responsibility for who and what causes drug-related harm.
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spelling pubmed-53816242017-04-21 Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project Anderson, Peter Berridge, Virginia Conrod, Patricia Dudley, Robert Hellman, Matilda Lachenmeier, Dirk Lingford-Hughes, Anne Miller, David Rehm, Jürgen Room, Robin Schmidt, Laura Sullivan, Roger Ysa, Tamyko Gual, Antoni F1000Res Opinion Article In 2013, illegal drug use was responsible for 1.8% of years of life lost in the European Union, alcohol was responsible for 8.2% and tobacco for 18.2%, imposing economic burdens in excess of 2.5% of GDP. No single European country has optimal governance structures for reducing the harm done by nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol, and existing ones are poorly designed, fragmented, and sometimes cause harm. Reporting the main science and policy conclusions of a transdisciplinary five-year analysis of the place of addictions in Europe, researchers from 67 scientific institutions addressed these problems by reframing an understanding of addictions.  A new paradigm needs to account for evolutionary evidence which suggests that humans are biologically predisposed to seek out drugs, and that, today, individuals face availability of high drug doses, consequently increasing the risk of harm.  New definitions need to acknowledge that the defining element of addictive drugs is ‘heavy use over time’, a concept that could replace the diagnostic artefact captured by the clinical term ‘substance use disorder’, thus opening the door for new substances to be considered such as sugar. Tools of quantitative risk assessment that recognize drugs as toxins could be further deployed to assess regulatory approaches to reducing harm. Re-designed governance of drugs requires embedding policy within a comprehensive societal well-being frame that encompasses a range of domains of well-being, including quality of life, material living conditions and sustainability over time; such a frame adds arguments to the inappropriateness of policies that criminalize individuals for using drugs and that continue to categorize certain drugs as illegal. A health footprint, modelled on the carbon footprint, and using quantitative measures such as years of life lost due to death or disability, could serve as the accountability tool that apportions responsibility for who and what causes drug-related harm. F1000Research 2017-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC5381624/ /pubmed/28435669 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.10860.1 Text en Copyright: © 2017 Anderson P et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Opinion Article
Anderson, Peter
Berridge, Virginia
Conrod, Patricia
Dudley, Robert
Hellman, Matilda
Lachenmeier, Dirk
Lingford-Hughes, Anne
Miller, David
Rehm, Jürgen
Room, Robin
Schmidt, Laura
Sullivan, Roger
Ysa, Tamyko
Gual, Antoni
Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title_full Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title_fullStr Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title_full_unstemmed Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title_short Reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the ALICE RAP Project
title_sort reframing the science and policy of nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol – conclusions of the alice rap project
topic Opinion Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5381624/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28435669
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.10860.1
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