Ecstasy safer than aspirin, says top UK cop

[Morris Onions]

A senior British police chief has come under attack for claiming the illicit drug ecstasy is safer to take than aspirin.

North Wales police chief constable Richard Brunstrom has sparked outrage by making the controversial claim and calling for the legalisation of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, within a decade.

Brunstrom says he believes ecstasy is a "remarkably safe substance" and that people who raise concerns about the dangers of taking it were "scaremongering".

"It's far safer than aspirin," he told BBC radio.

"It's far less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol which are freely available.

"There is a lot of scaremongering, rumour-mongering around ecstasy in particular. It isn't borne out by the evidence."

Brunstrom's comments have sparked calls from anti-drugs campaigners for his resignation.

Ecstasy has been blamed for causing more than 200 deaths in Britain since 1996.


http://tinyurl.com/38pofz

[Boojatta]

1. Aspirin has been blamed for causing how many deaths in Britain since 1996?

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Probably depends on whether you count suicides or not

Figures for the USA:

There are over 500 aspirin deaths in this country every year, from large accidental (child) or mostly suicidal (adult) overdoses or, rarely, from allergic reactions. Actually, in the United States, children aspirin deaths have declined from 40 to just 2 within the last 20 years.

http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Salix/index.html

So proportionately, you might expect about 100 aspirin deaths each year in the UK.

[Mr Creosote]

3. So piling speculation upon speculation

thats probably about 5 times as many as caused by ecstacy. But I bet the number taking aspirin is much more than 5 times the number taking ecstacy.