Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin' says Prof David Nutt

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered, according to a study in the Lancet.

The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former government chief drugs adviser who was sacked in 2009.

It ranked 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Heroin, crack and crystal meth were deemed worst for individuals, with alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine worst for society, and alcohol worst overall.

The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also said tobacco and cocaine were judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD were among the least damaging.

Harm score
Professor Nutt refused to leave the drugs debate when he was sacked from his official post by the former Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.

He went on to form the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, which says it aims to investigate the drug issue without any political interference.

One of its other members is Dr Les King, another former government adviser who quit over Prof Nutt's treatment.

Members of the group, joined by two other experts, scored each drug for harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities.
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".

'Valid and necessary'
The findings run contrary to the government's long-established drug classification system, but the paper's authors argue that their system - based on the consensus of experts - provides an accurate assessment of harm for policy makers.

"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."

In 2007, Prof Nutt and colleagues undertook a limited attempt to create a harm ranking system, sparking controversy over the criteria and the findings.

The new, more complex, system ranked alcohol as three times more harmful than cocaine or tobacco. Ecstasy was ranked as causing one-eighth the harm of alcohol.

It also contradicted the Home Office's decision to make the so-called legal high mephedrone a Class B drug, saying that alcohol was five times more harmful.

The rankings have been published to coincide with a conference on drugs policy, organised by Prof Nutt's committee.

'Extraordinary lengths'
Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.

"Crack cocaine is more addictive than alcohol but because alcohol is so widely used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and those people will go to extraordinary lengths to get it."

He said it was important to separate harm to individuals and harm to society.



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Government advisor Professor David Nutt likens the effects of alcohol to a range of other drugs including heroin.
The Lancet paper written by Prof Nutt, Dr King and Dr Lawrence Phillips, does not examine the harm caused to users by taking more than one drug at a time.

Gavin Partington, of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said alcohol abuse affected "a minority" who needed "education, treatment and enforcement".

Mr Partington, who is the spokesman for the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said millions of people enjoyed alcohol "as part of a regular and enjoyable social drink".

"Clearly alcohol misuse is a problem in the country and our real fear is that, by talking in such extreme terms, Professor Nutt and his colleagues risk switching people off from considering the real issues and the real action that is needed to tackle alcohol misuse," he said.

"We are talking about a minority. We need to focus policy around that minority, which is to do with education, treatment and enforcement."

A Home Office spokesman said: "Our priorities are clear - we want to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good."

watching television

In these days, amagic box that we call it television has lots of fans, but it has some advantages and disadvantages .
A good example of advantages is getting information from news,weather forcasting and so on
An other great use of tv is amusing your child by watching cartoon when you are busy.
some disadvantages of this magic box are:
First, because it has many different programs like:movies, documentries,science news and other stuff like these it might addicted you and waste your time.
Second, if you watch it from near of it's screen it might damage your eyes.
I think nearly 70 percent of people choose tv for spending their free time and entertaining themselves.
In my idea people prefer tv to radio, because radio has nothing to show and they will be tired by listening to it.

Payamenoor university

Nowdays,Payamenoor university availables much feasibilities for volunteers.This university in addition to contain all governmental university feasibilities,Due to having semi-present and non-present classes assemble that prepare people to work and study at the same time.In past,people tought the issue that perhaps there isn't any work market for them after graduation as soon as they heard the name of payamenoor.But in recent years ue to education quality improvement level and high knowledge masters' presence this idea has changed.

For some time now,This university begins to increase it's training units in all over the country to make the easier access for common people.For example:in Tehran province, Karaj, Shahriyar and other cities have seprate training units and people that live there coud refer to nearest unit easier.

In addition to the university availability,ther are other reasons which atract volunteers to the payamenoor.Perhaps the chief reason is optional classes that able students don't present at class.Second,this university doesn't have provisional pass so the lessons which had not passed will not impact the certificated and general average.

Payamenoor and other university have several charactristics in common.First,both of them are under the supervision of science ministry.Second,the students can take the units by the maximum of 20 units (below the 17 score) and maximum of 24 units (over the 17 score).

This university has other facilities as like online enrol,that the students able enrol through saving time and money for that purpose First, should enter the website. Then,do the enrol levels in the Golestan system and at last, take the enrol print.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans.
-Physiological needs include:
Breathing
Food
Homeostasis
-Safety needs include:
Personal security
Financial security
Health and well-being
Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts
-Love and Belonging needs include:
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs are social and involve feelings of belongingness.
Friendship
Intimacy
Family
-Esteem needs include:
All humans have a need to be respected and to have self-esteem and self-respect. Also known as the belonging need, esteem presents the normal human desire to be accepted and valued by others.
-Self-actualization need include:
This level of need pertains to what a person's full potential is and realizing that potential. Maslow describes this desire as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming. This is a broad definition of the need for self-actualization, but when applied to individuals the need is specific.

Nature versus nurture

relationship between innateness and environmental in Developmental psychology


A significant issue in developmental psychology is the relationship between innateness and environmental influence in regard to any particular aspect of development. This is often referred to as "nature versus nurture" or nativism versus empiricism. A nativist account of development would argue that the processes in question are innate, that is, they are specified by the organism's genes. An empiricist perspective would argue that those processes are acquired in interaction with the environment. Today developmental psychologists rarely take such extreme positions with regard to most aspects of development; rather they investigate, among many other things, the relationship between innate and environmental influences. One of the ways in which this relationship has been explored in recent years is through the emerging field of evolutionary developmental psychology

Forough Farrokhzad (Biography)

Forugh was born in Tehran to career military officer Colonel Mohammad Bagher Farrokhzad and his wife Touran Vaziri-Tabar in 1935. The third of seven children (Amir, Massoud, Mehrdad, Fereydoun Farrokhzad., Pouran, Gloria), she attended school until the ninth grade, then was taught painting and sewing at a girl's school for the manual arts. At age sixteen she was married to Parviz Shapour, an acclaimed satirist. Farrokhzad continued her education with classes in painting and sewing and moved with her husband to Ahvaz. A year later, she bore her only child, a son named Kamya

Within two years, in 1954, Farrokhzad and her husband divorced; Parviz won custody of the child. She moved back to Tehran to write poetry and published her first volume, entitled The Captive, in 1955.

. In 1958 she spent nine months in Europe and met film-maker and writer Ebrahim Golestan, who reinforced her own inclinations to express herself and live independently. She published two more volumes, The Wall and The Rebellion before traveling to Tabriz to make a film about Iranians affected by leprosy. This 1962 documentary film titled The House is Black won several international awards. During the twelve days of shooting, she became attached to Hossein Mansouri, the child of two lepers. She adopted the boy and brought him to live at her mother's house.

In 1963 she published Another Birth. Her poetry was now mature and sophisticated, and a profound change from previous modern Iranian poetic conventions.

At 4:30PM on February 13, 1967, Farrokhzad died in a car accident at age thirty-two. In order to avoid hitting a school bus, she swerved her Jeep, which hit a stone wall; she died before reaching the hospital.

Final (ladan Bagheri)

Bad and good habits
There are many habits among many of people. Some of them are good and other ones are bad. I want to write about two habits: exercise and smoking. Exercise is an example for good habits and smoking is an example for bad habits.
First smoking; some people used to smoking when they have problem. They think that smoking helps them and reduce their stresses. Indeed it is a psychological reaction and is not correct .Smoking among teenagers has increased rapidly because they think that it is a clue to grow up. But smoking badly causes health problems for others and themselves. Smoking is harmful for human body and damage human organism. It is a factor for many diseases, for instance heart disease and respiratory diseases. The most important disease is cancer. Annually outnumbered person die with the sick.
Also smoking is dangerous for pregnant woman and infant. There are many reasons why smoking is a bad habit, so we have to avoid the smoking.
Second, exercise:
Exercise is one of the best habits for people. There are many choices to do that. Some of them are professional and nonprofessional. Soccer, basketball, volleyball, ski and swimming are examples for professional exercises. Aerobic and general exercises are examples for nonprofessional. Some of the exercises are useful for calmness. Environment must be silent, like that yoga. So everyone can find suitable exercise for (him/her) self. With exercise we can enhance our body and our mind. The best time for exercise is early morning, but we can do it in other times. We can do it lonely or with our friends, and we can do it at home or at parks. We feel fresh by exercise.
First and second are tow habits. It is our choice that be safe and health or be sick and disease.

Ladan Bagheri