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Alcohol and tobacco are by far the worst of any drugs ever created.
There have been many studies on this subject (none in the US, since we are under strict prohibition). They calculate both harm to user and harm to society.
Almost all these studies are in agreement that there are three classes of 'hard' drugs that are significantly worse than the rest- opioids, amphetamines, and alcohol. Many rate alcohol as slightly more destructive than the other two.
Tobacco is rated significantly less harmful, mostly because of the amount of tobacco it takes to do harm. No one dies from a single night of heavy smoking; many people die from a single night of alcohol, amphetamines, or opiates. Second-hand smoke is dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as a drunk driver.
Personally I think these studies underrate benzodiazipines, they should be considered the fourth class of hard drugs imo.
This is a great response.
When harm to society is considered, does that include such things as health care, legal/criminal, and damages to property? Death would obviously be a more weigghted category.
The single use danger makes sense.
I wonder, is length of horrific suffering and toll it takes and trauma it leaves, a factor?
(My dad was a drinker, his many medical issues attributed to drinking were not much fun to witness over the 7 months I had to stay with them til he died.
I am not ok.)
Sorry to hear about your father.
I believe the study considered everything you mentioned, you can see the categories in this graph:
PDF of the study is available: Drug harms in the UK: A multi-criterion decision analysis
Thanks for these stats. Its nice to see actual data.
It's not exactly a revelation. Seeing the drugs that were all the rave in the 90s/00's at the bottom end of the data and remembering the UK gov and police going hard against the love, all the while docs are prescribing the worst and pubs are serving the king of the worst.
Also, Imagine if alcohol were illegal.
And thanks for the sentiment.
Its been years now but I still have flashbacks and it makes me want to drink. I don't drink, seing what it did to his body. He was otherwise an upstanding and very well respected member of community and society. He just liked his beer and whiskey at the end of the day. Every day.
Though I have done every other drug on that list aside from khat. I don't anymore.
Just the best 7 or 8 of them.
Uh there's Krokodil (actually it turns out most of what you read is the production not the literal chemical desomorphine causing most of the issues you hear about)
Also "relatively few drugs come from Venezuela into the U.S. The synthetic opioid fentanyl causes the most fatalities in the US, but is mainly produced by Mexican cartels from Chinese raw materials."
No.
In terms of mortality it's not even close. Alcohol alone kills nearly twice as many people as all other drugs combined.
Tobacco, 5x as many.
Sure, but isn't that just because anyone can buy them in the supermarket? Start selling opioids in the same way and I'm pretty sure those stats would change.
Is the AK-47 the worst weapon we've created just because it's killed the most people? I don't think that's how those stats are supposed to be used, imo.
There are several countries that basically did this and no, the stats don't change. In fact, de-criminalizing those drugs has lead to a decrease in usage and associated deaths in all cases I'm aware of.
Decriminalization isn’t anywhere near the same as legalization. One means you wont go to jail when you get caught with it despite it being illegal to sell, while the other means it's legal to possess, buy, and sell.
I'm also curious about the rates of users to deaths and not just total number of deaths as most adults use alcohol at some point while only a tiny percent use stuff like meth or heroin.
Studies in the UK show that there are three classes of 'hard' drugs - alcohol, amphetamines, and opioids.
All three roughly follow the '10% rule': 10% of people who try these drugs become addicted, and 10% of addicts die from their addiction.
Meth, heroin, and alcohol each kill about 1% of the people who try them.
Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis
Its an interesting abstract but unfortunately doesn't include the data or breakdown of methodology without having Lancet access.
Here's a better link where you can download the full PDF Drug harms in the UK: A multi-criterion decision analysis