Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.
You could then make a driving speed chart like this.
Driving 35-75 MPH would get a very big bar for both harm to others and harm to drivers, due to the volume of accidents that occur at those speeds.
Driving 76-100 MPH would have a smaller bar, because fewer drivers drive that fast.
Driving 101-130 MPH would have an even smaller bar, as you're getting into a small subset of reckless drivers.
At the bottom of the chart, you might have speeds that can only be achieved with high-performance sports cars. 160-200 MPH would have a tiny bar for both harm to others and to the driver, as barely anyone possesses both the recklessness and equipment to drive at these speeds.
So, then, that chart can get a headline reading "Driving at 35 MPH 'more harmful' than driving at 200 MPH."
Most accidents do happen between 35 and 75 mph. So most of the energy of the road safety agencies should be directed at making roads where people travel at those speeds safer.
This is what the study is intended to demonstrate: that the harm caused by alcohol is so much greater than the harm caused by Ecstasy, that alcohol should get a whole lot more attention than Ecstasy.
How stupid would it be to focus all our energies on regulating race tracks where people are allowed to drive above 130mph, "which are so much more dangerous than 35mph"? This is what our drug policy is doing... focusing on the 180mph roads even though most of the accidents are happening on the "safe" 30mph roads.
1) It's an argument against the article because the chart is presented with little consideration to the methods used to generate the chart, which are arbitrary and are homomorphic to a specific (yet unspecified) definition of harm.
2) It's easy to interpret the chart to mean that, in the driving metaphor, driving at 200 mph is safe so let's just eliminate speed limits. Again a deficiency in the definition of harm (total harm, harm per capita, economic harm, social harm, initial harm, expected lifetime harm, average harm, what does harm even mean) leading to conclusions not supported by evidence.
A more specific chart and methodology would help people to do informed reasoning. If your presentation of evidence isn't actually helping people to make more informed conclusions, what is it doing?
You could then make a driving speed chart like this.
Driving 35-75 MPH would get a very big bar for both harm to others and harm to drivers, due to the volume of accidents that occur at those speeds.
Driving 76-100 MPH would have a smaller bar, because fewer drivers drive that fast.
Driving 101-130 MPH would have an even smaller bar, as you're getting into a small subset of reckless drivers.
At the bottom of the chart, you might have speeds that can only be achieved with high-performance sports cars. 160-200 MPH would have a tiny bar for both harm to others and to the driver, as barely anyone possesses both the recklessness and equipment to drive at these speeds.
So, then, that chart can get a headline reading "Driving at 35 MPH 'more harmful' than driving at 200 MPH."