First of all, I never said crack was SAFER than alcohol and nicotine. I said they both have far most costs to society at the current time than it does. This is what I'm talking about. You kids open your mouths and spout the most inane unsupportable hogwash and then wonder why you get 0.08% of the vote in the Presidential election. Given the destruction that drugs wage on our citizens, the drug trafficker is no better than a serial killer, and I think public execution is being generous.
First of all, I am a registered republican and supported the RLC. I voted for Bush in 2000, Keyes in the primaries. Second, drug trafficking has NOTHING TO DO with being a serial killer. One is taken by choice, the other by force. If you do not understand this logic, your rationale is seriously impaired. Second, all illicit drugs COMBINED kill less than 1/10th of what alcohol does each year. Alcohol (excluding the cost of the drug war from tax dollars) has 3-4x the economic costs of all illicit drugs COMBINED. I'd prefer torture, then execution, but I'll settle for execution. You'd be amazed at how the level of drug use and abuse will plummet after a few public hangings of these monsters. So go wax poetic about "liberty" and "freedom" to smoke crack and I'll continue advocating for the death of drug traffickers. You guys really make me laugh. I'm surprised you haven't called me a -gasp- "statist".
And you wonder why I assert that you are a authoritarian fascist.
I guess our founding father's were loonytarians too, seeing all the drug laws that were around.
As for the facts. Addictive Qualities of Popular Drugs
 |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparing Addictive Qualities of Popular Drugs (Higher score indicates more serious effect) |
|||||
| Drug | Dependence | Withdrawal | Tolerance | Reinforcement | Intoxication |
| Nicotine | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Heroin | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| Cocaine | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Alcohol | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
| Caffeine | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Marijuana | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Withdrawal: Presence and severity of characteristic withdrawal symptoms.
Reinforcement: A measure of the substance's ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it again and again, and in preference to other substances.
Tolerance: How much of the substance is needed to satisfy increasing cravings for it, and the level of stable need that is eventually reached.
Dependence: How difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm.
Intoxication: Though not usually counted as a measure of addiction in itself, the level of intoxication is associated with addiction and increases the personal and social damage a substance may do.
Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use."
Annual Causes of Death in the United States
| Tobacco | 430,7001 |
| Alcohol | 110,6402 |
| Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs | 32,0003 |
| Suicide | 30,5754 |
| Homicide | 18,2725 |
| All Licit & Illicit Drug-Induced Deaths | 16,9266 |
| Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin | 7,6007 |
| Marijuana | 08 |
- (Average 1990-1994) According to the US Centers for Disease Control, from the beginning of 1990 through 1994 "2,153,700 deaths (1,393,200 men and 760-400 women; total annual average: 430,700 deaths) were attributed to smoking (19.5% of all deaths)." The CDC notes that "Cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States."
Source:(1996): "Smoking-Attributable Mortality and Years of Potential Life Lost," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control, 1997), May 23, 1997, Vol. 46, No. 20, p. 449.
- According to the federal National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in 1996 an estimated 110,640 people in the US died due to alcohol.
Source: "Number of deaths and age-adjusted death rates per 100,000 population for categories of alcohol-related (A-R) mortality, United States and States, 1979-96," National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, from the web at http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/databases/armort01.txt, last accessed Feb. 12, 2001, citing Alcohol Epidemiologic Data System, Saadatmand, F., Stinson, FS, Grant, BF, and Dufour, MC, "Surveillance Report #52: Liver Mortality in the United States, 1970-96" (Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Division of Biometry and Epidemiology, December 1999).
- (Average 1982-1998): According to Canadian researchers, approximately 32,000 hospitalized patients (and possibly as many as 106,000) in the USA die each year because of adverse reactions to their prescribed medications.
Source: Lazarou, J, Pomeranz, BH, Corey, PN, "Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies," Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago, IL: American Medical Association, 1998), 1998;279:1200-1205, also letters column, "Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients," JAMA (Chicago, IL: AMA, 1998), Nov. 25, 1998, Vol. 280, No. 20, from the web at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n20/ffull/jlt1125-1.html, last accessed Feb. 12, 2001.
- (1998): The US Centers for Disease Control reports that in 1998, there were a total of 30,575 deaths from suicide in the US.
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., "Deaths: Final Data for 1998," National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), Table 10, p. 53, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
- (1998): The US Centers for Disease Control reports that in 1998, there were a total of 18,272 deaths from homicide in the US.
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., "Deaths: Final Data for 1998," National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), Table 10, p. 53, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
- (1998): "In 1998 a total of 16,926 persons died of drug-induced causes in the United States (Table 20). The category 'drug-induced causes' includes not only deaths from dependent and nondependent use of drugs (legal and illegal use), but also poisoning from medically prescribed and other drugs. It excludes accidents, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use. Also excluded are newborn deaths due to mother's drug use." The total number of deaths in the US in 1998 was 2,337,256.
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., Centers for Disease Control, "Deaths: Final Data for 1998,", National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), pp. 1, 10, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
- (1996): "Each year, use of NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) accounts for an estimated 7,600 deaths and 76,000 hospitalizations in the United States." (NSAIDs include aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, diclofenac, ketoprofen, and tiaprofenic acid.)
Source: Robyn Tamblyn, PhD; Laeora Berkson, MD, MHPE, FRCPC; W. Dale Jauphinee, MD, FRCPC; David Gayton, MD, PhD, FRCPC; Roland Grad, MD, MSc; Allen Huang, MD, FRCPC; Lisa Isaac, PhD; Peter McLeod, MD, FRCPC; and Linda Snell, MD, MHPE, FRCPC, "Unnecessary Prescribing of NSAIDs and the Management of NSAID-Related Gastropathy in Medical Practice," Annals of Internal Medicine (Washington, DC: American College of Physicians, 1997), September 15, 1997, 127:429-438, from the web at http://www.acponline.org/journals/annals/15sep97/nsaid.htm, last accessed Feb. 14, 2001, citing Fries, JF, "Assessing and understanding patient risk," Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology Supplement, 1992;92:21-4.
- An exhaustive search of the literature finds no deaths induced by marijuana. The US Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) records instances of drug mentions in medical examiners' reports, and though marijuana is mentioned, it is usually in combination with alcohol or other drugs. Marijuana alone has not been shown to cause an overdose death.
Source: Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), available on the web at http://www.samhsa.gov/; also see Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A. Benson, Jr., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), available on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/; and US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition" (Docket #86-22), September 6, 1988, p. 57.
A 1998 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) estimated the economic costs of alcohol abuse in the United States to be $148.02 billion in 1992, 80% ($119.32 billion) of which were due to alcohol-related illness (including health care expenditures, impaired productivity and premature death). To contrast, illegal drug abuse cost a total of $97.66 billion in 1992, of which less than 40% ($38.71 billion) was due to drug-related illness or premature death. This figure includes $4.16 billion in HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis treatment costs. Sixty percent (60%) of drug costs were due to drug-related law enforcement, incarceration and crime. Only 3% of drug costs were from victims of drug-related crime.
Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The Economic Costs of Alcohol and Drug Abuse in the United States, 1992 (Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, May 1998), Table 1.1, p. 1-3 and Table 4.1, p. 4-2. When examining the medical affects of marijuana use, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded, "A careful search of the literature and testimony of the nation's health officials has not revealed a single human fatality in the United States proven to have resulted solely from ingestion of marihuana. Experiments with the drug in monkeys demonstrated that the dose required for overdose death was enormous and for all practical purposes unachievable by humans smoking marihuana. This is in marked contrast to other substances in common use, most notably alcohol and barbiturate sleeping pills. The WHO reached the same conclusion in 1995.
Source: Shafer, Raymond P., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Ch. III, (Washington DC: National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972); Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S., WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use, August 28, 1995, (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, March 1998