Aah, I remember seeing a documentary about this! At first I was a little surprised to see alcohol and tobacco ranking this high, but when I thought about my father who destroyed himself completely as a heavy drinker and smoker and died in his early 50s, I could relate. Wasn’t a pretty sight seeing him looking more dead every day!
I think what makes them especially dangerous is that they are - although indeed drugs - freely available to just about anyone and it’s completely ‘normal’ to use them. This makes people easily forget that these are nothing else than drugs…
This makes you really think especially the deaths from alcohol and tobacco compared to heroin and coke every year. Now the fight against tobacco is already underway as most countries having strict non smoking policies.
But alcohol is to ingrained in most societies and its misuse is here to stay. And banning alcohol is like telling America to ban guns, imo its never gonna happen. More future restrictions…perhaps.
Well it’s something I’ve thought about before, for instance there’s alot more damage done to the body when you get drunk then when you get high from cannabis while the addictive properties are very much the same of both substances. Yet cannabis is illegal in almost every country in the world and drinking alcohol is socialy accepted. Not that people should start using weed or anything, but it’s pretty weird when you think about it
In moderate amounts, alcohol, especially red wine, has well documented health benefits. The problem is some people don’t understand “moderate” and drink themselves to death. Of course, I’d venture to guess, judging from the amount of obese folk I see everyday, the most dangerous drug is actually food. For whatever reason–comfort, sugar craving, etc.–America is eating itself to death. Europeans seem to eat less than Yanks and appeared a lot slimmer than North Americans when I visited Europe last summer.
This is looking at number of users vs. number of deaths - IT would seem from that statistic that alchohol is much more dangerous
Here is the problem with using this statistic as the sole evaluation of a substances “death potential” - it doesn’t take into consideration frequency of use (or abuse)
We don’t see how they determine the number of users - is it everyone who admits to any use? If so then the 1 cigarette a week (while drunk) smoker gets added to the total number of users.
It also doesn’t take into consideration frequency of use - Someone who binge drinks 5 times a week is given the same weight as someone who only drinks one glass of wine daily.
I would imagine that a statistic looking at the danger on a per use basis (how likely are you to die every time you drop ex vs. per drinking session) you would see a different picture. Even that picture is skewed though because it wouldn’t take into consideration addiction.
Finally - we don’t see how they determine number of deaths… if a meth addict kills someone mugging them so he can get high again is that added to the total number of meth deaths? (probably not) When a drunk driver crashes and kills 4 people are they all added to the yearly alchohol death count (probably)
The fact that marijuana is more dangerous than ex makes me very suspicious of this list… simply put marijuana has almost no immediate use danger where ex can be dangerous every single time you use it (especially if you aren’t being careful about your sourcing).
Anyways this list is garbage like some of the above said. The amounts it takes to kill is surely not calculated. There is a specific limit you can pass or just a bad reaction. Stupidity also doesn’t come into play. So I am surprised weed is even on this list.
Hmmm, if you look at deaths/users they are pretty high up, but I’d rather have a friend smoke ciggarettes, live a fulfilling productive life and then get lung cancer at 72 than getting addicted to herion, steal whore and beg to die at 32. It is not just about how many die, but also when and how the quality of life is while using.
