Unlike starvation, AIDS and TB which target the "right" people. Apparently.
Posted on 02/25/2003 10:03:24 AM PST by Hemingway's Ghost
CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) - Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs prematurely kill about 7 million people worldwide each year and the number is rising, according to a study released in Australia on Tuesday.
Professor Juergen Rehm, director of Switzerland's Addiction Research Institute, said in the Australian capital Canberra the global burden of disease resulting from smoking, drinking and taking drugs was huge.
"One reason for this is increased worldwide exposure to these substances, especially in the highly populated emerging economies of Southeast Asia and China," Rehm told Reuters before presenting his study to an international drug-research symposium in Perth.
"Another is that the relative share of diseases associated with substance abuse, such as chronic disease, accidents and injuries, as well as HIV and hepatitis, are predicted to increase."
Rehm said tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs were responsible for about 8.9 percent of the total global burden of disease in the year 2000, with his study building on some research he conducted for the World Health Organization last year.
He said tobacco was the number one killer addiction in 2000, responsible for 4.9 million deaths or 71 percent of the total drug-related deaths -- a jump of more than one million since 1990.
The rise was most marked in developing nations although most smoking-related diseases were found in industrialized countries.
About 1.8 million deaths were attributable to the use of alcohol, about 26 percent of all drug-related deaths, with the proportion greatest in the Americas and Europe. Russia's alcohol problem was particularly pronounced.
Illicit drugs caused about 223,000 deaths, or three percent of all drug-related deaths.
"The most surprising finding from this research is that alcohol has become the number one risk factor in developing countries with emerging economies like China and Thailand over the past decade, above tobacco," Rehm said.
Rehm said although the outlook seemed bleak, he hoped his research could be used by governments to formulate policies to combat the preventable deaths and disease.
He said increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco had proved to be a more effective way to reduce drinking and smoking, and resulting disease, than treatment or health care intervention.
Copyright 2003 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
It's easy to discern a statistic from an inferrence. It doesn't require a statistic to declare an inferrence an inferrence.
Yep... When they finally outlaw all the stuff that's bad for us, there's going to be a whole lot of people that'll feel pretty silly laying there in a hospital dying of *nothing*.
You're sniffing the shoe again, my friend.
He was also one of the most dour men I've ever met. Went through three divorces. He was completely friendless - I tried to speak to him on occasion and he had nothing to talk about but his work and his health. Not too long ago, I heard from another former co-worker that he was hit by a car while he was jogging.
Tragic. But you can also draw your own moral from this story.
Only if illegal drugs were made legal and had the same availibility could you even begin to compare. Also, what are the raw numbers? How many smokers are there? How many illegal drug users are there?
Totally useless statistics.
That assumes that the only interesting question is, 'how intrinsically lethal are these substances.' It's not clear that this is the only interesting question.
You can look at the fact that illegal drugs cause THREE percent of lethality from drug use and make plenty of directionally-accurate conclusions, unless, of course, you could care less about accuracy or direction.
3% sounds high to me. Booze is by far the drug of choice for derelicts and addicts. It is also deadly: $20 worth will very reliably kill you. It quite literally deadlier than heroin. Self-destructive behavior cannot be prevented by prohibitions. The same people drinking themselves to death today would be huffing gasoline if booze were illegal. If you want to see really scary addicts, go see some glue-sniffers. Not a brain cell left alive. If you really care about reducing misery, you would realize that addiction is the problem, not drugs. Drugs are just an excuse for government goons to suck $70 billion out of our economy each year in the name of a war that, if won, would reduce drug deaths by approximately 3%. Yeah, that's worth losing our freedom over.
The article made no distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic lethality. He just provided totals. Why is that an issue?
If one drug eats your liver and the other makes you think you can fly off a 20 story building, you're just as dead.
Unlike starvation, AIDS and TB which target the "right" people. Apparently.
Does it seem likely that if they were legal useage would increase thirty-fold---or anything like thirty-fold?
What is the heroin usage equivalent to 2 beers after work or better yet communion wine.
Self-destructive behavior cannot be prevented by prohibitions.
Like concerts with fireworks?
The same people drinking themselves to death today would be huffing gasoline if booze were illegal. If you want to see really scary addicts, go see some glue-sniffers. Not a brain cell left alive. If you really care about reducing misery, you would realize that addiction is the problem, not drugs. Drugs are just an excuse for government goons to suck $70 billion out of our economy each year in the name of a war that, if won, would reduce drug deaths by approximately 3%. Yeah, that's worth losing our freedom over.
Making all drugs legal all the time would cost a lot more. Atleast that is the opinion of a lot of us. There is an important gray scale to the anti-WOD and that is the vast difference between legalizing all drugs all the time and lightening up on people who want to smoke a little weed. I don't have much problem at all with the latter end of the scale but the former end of the scale shows what happend to minds on too many drugs.
Be careful what you wish for. Consider that Marijuana is the most common illegal drug. It is also far safer than booze, for sure. I bet there is not a single credible marijuana death in these numbers. So if marijuana displaced alcohol, the number of deaths would decline. Would that be good, or bad?
All you know from this article is the number of people who die. And you're comparing the easily available legal products with underground illegal products.
How many people die each year from eating dirt? How many people die from eating food? Geez, maybe if we all ate dirt we'd live longer. This is junk science and junk statistics. It's worthless.
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