Professor Bobby Smyth:

The question was what would happen were alcohol discovered tomorrow. In terms of the ranking of harms associated with drugs and substances and the risks, alcohol is probably somewhere in the middle. I do not think that it would be the substance plucked out of the lot that we would choose to regulate first. As I said earlier, however, we are where we are with alcohol. As Mr. Condon said, prohibition did not work largely because of enforcement and compliance issues. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. I recognise that prohibition is not an answer for alcohol, we just need to regulate it better. For me, that is an extra reason to worry about moving down the path of legalising other drugs because when things get worse following that, as I believe that they will, it will be too late. You will not be able to put that genie back in the bottle either. We will then have two, if not more, legal, addictive, intoxicating substances available and doing increased harm across the population.