Still Stupid?

Yes, health researchers still are.

Let's be honest, basic logic is tough for some people. In fact, some colleges have done away with even offering Symbolic Logic (Auskunft and I remember fondly when our alma mater used to offer the course, but all the professors qualified to teach it got better jobs. Wee.). But wow. I mean, wow. When you are trying to sift data, you might want to have some elementary grasp on what those data mean.

Let's crush these intellectual midgets point-by-point.

First, this laughable crap:

Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.

That is what happens when these drugs are legal and many people use them, because it's socially acceptable. If marijuana were socially acceptable and exactly as many people used it as alcohol and tobacco, I just bet we'd see some changes in the numbers. But damn, that was logic I just used. And logic is wrong. And hurtful. Let's proceed.

Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs — including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol — should be regulated.

Secret message decoded! "Let's bring back Prohibition." Hey, England, I know you guys didn't make that awful mistake yourselves, but take it from us - it doesn't work. Just like us, you'd probably get Irish mobsters smuggling in illegal hooch anyway, with a big spike in violent crime. Then some guy in a wheelchair would come along and repeal the whole shebang.

"This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Leslie Iversen, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University.

Lollerskates. I bet the author of this article searched long and hard for a quote that supported this ridiculous position. And why? I mean, you don't even have to search to find someone who supports Hitler, or any number of evil, anti-intellectual beliefs. Funny. Next line in the article:

Iversen was not connected to the research.

I am stunned that this made it into the final draft. The author doth protest too much.

While experts agreed that criminalizing alcohol and tobacco would be challenging...

Yeah, good luck with that. I am sure the soccer hooligans in England are just going to embrace the idea fully. Oh, and did I mention, we tried this once across the pond? Didn't work out so well.

Nutt called for more education so that people were aware of the risks of various drugs. "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day."

Is being a pseudo-intellectual teetotal a drug? Because the danger is that I will break your nose with my bottle of Guinness. FYI.

I love how the whole point of this was to say that smoking is still bad for you. In case you forgot, I guess.

I guess I will have to point that out to my grandfather, who is in his late 80's and smoked for decades. Yep, if it weren't for smoking, he might be...even more alive.