6 ms·
What is the most dangerous drug? (2019)
- x32n23nr 6y agoI'm genuinely surprised Sugar is not even in the list.
- sukilot 6y agoThe headline (and chart) is misleading. The article is about intoxicants. Also, sugar isn't generally considered a drug.
- mark-r 6y agoIs tobacco considered an intoxicant then?
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoNot a drug. But of course very harmful.
- xchaotic 6y agoYou eat sugar in some form everyday so it’d be pretty hard and pointless to try and ban it. And potentially more harmful too. Used wisely, just like drugs, sugar can be good for you- that’s why our bodies like it.
- luckylion 6y ago> You eat sugar in some form everyday so it’d be pretty hard and pointless to try and ban it. Fruit juice regularly contains a small amount of alcohol, yet I'm sure nobody counts it as a drug. Shouldn't we consider sugar similarly? An apple? Not a drug. A candy bar or a soda? Well, it does give you energy and a good feeling...
- robbrown451 6y agoApple juice has as much sugar as soda. Also, what about breakfast cereal? Canned pasta marketed to kids? Etc. All have lots of sugar. Where do you draw the line?
- luckylion 6y agoAnything artificially sweetened would be a good start, I suppose. I'm not in the "omg drugs, we can't have those!"-camp, but viewing sugar similar to caffeine makes sense to me. It seems to be addictive, it will change your state and mood, and high-dose and long-term use is bad for you.
- dahfizz 6y agoSugar is not a drug.
- genghisjahn 6y agoIt’d be pretty sweet if it was on the list.
- pfortuny 6y agoWhich sugar?
- kalium-xyz 6y agoIt should be but its not a comprehensive list and in the minds of people crystalline sugar is not something esoteric. Interesting to think about the other modern white powder and how it must affect us.
- sukilot 6y agoIf hard drugs were legalized, I doubt they'd stay less dangerous than alcohol.
- Matticus_Rex 6y agoProhibition is actually THE biggest driving force behind making drugs more potent for various reasons (one being that potency reduces transport costs for the same effective dose), so it seems implausible that legalization would be worse on this count.
- np_tedious 6y agoWorse still, inconsistent potency. "I usually do 3 of these" might work OK until one day the stuff is 1.5x as strong and you've done nearly 5.
- cptnapalm 6y agoSome people I knew died of overdoses. The drug using friends of the deceased would then immediately seek out the dead person's drug dealer because they sold the "good stuff."
- NanoWar 6y agoHow would the drug become more dangerous?
- mark-r 6y agoThe point wasn't made explicit enough - if the drugs became legal, usage would go up and so would overall harm. At least that's the theory.
- Xylakant 6y agoWhy? Many illegal (hard) drugs, especially morphine derivatives have very few actual physical side effects - the most common side effect of morphine is constipation. Morphine is one of the choice painkillers in palliative care because of that Alcohol on the other hand is an actual toxin that kills cells.
- aschatten 6y agoSugar should be on the list!
- NanoWar 6y agoIt easy to gather and drink a bit of alcohol, like in ancient times. I can be social, but the dangers are bigger.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/UqKQG https://archive.md/UqKQG
- kasperni 6y agoHere is the original Lancet article [1] that has been used as the basis for the article. [1] http://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/news%20stories/dnutt-lancet-011110.pdf http://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/news%20stories/dnutt-lance...
- hashberry 6y agoAs someone who experimented with numerous drugs in college, I always remember being buzzed or drunk when the second drug was introduced. Alcohol lowers inhibitions and puts one in a "party" mode. It's also everywhere, making it easy to consume more than one drink. Plus it's fun to "stack" with other drugs like stimulants, making intoxication more dangerous. Alcohol is THE gateway drug.
- wcerfgba 6y agoPower
- parsimo2010 6y agoThe article mentions some of the shortfalls of the scoring system used, but I’m going to repeat an important one in the comments since not everyone reads the whole article. The scoring system used makes it look like alcohol is about as harmful as crack cocaine or heroin. That’s because they don’t normalize every harm per capita (some are, some aren't). What the scores show is that the total harm of nearly every adult in the UK drinking alcohol is about the same as the much smaller groups of people using crack or heroin. If an individual was choosing a drug to use, alcohol is by far less harmful per user. I’m not totally disagreeing with the article; it makes good points but it’s a little unfair to compare legal drugs vs illegal drugs on the basis of their total harm. If you want a fair comparison you should come up with a way to compare the harm that crack or heroin would do if they were legalized- I realize this is hard to do because you have to estimate how many more people would use heroin and also estimate whether the supply chain would become safer. My opinion is that an analysis assuming legality would show that crack and heroin would still be pretty harmful but that many recreational drugs like ecstasy and marijuana would be less harmful than alcohol if legalized. Quick edit: the comparison that I’m talking about is what causal inference in statistics tries to do, but this particular example is an unsolved problem because of issues with transportability and generalizability that arise because we don’t have any data where hard drugs are legal in a population that is comparable to the UK.
- hristov 6y agoYou make a good point. Another good point is that alcohol always comes out worst in these types of studies because it is relatively easy to detect. Blood and breath alcohol tests are prevalent, the police uses them all the time, including on people that have been killed by car accidents. Tests for other drugs are much more difficult, because as opposed to alcohol most other drugs get metabolized very quickly. While there are tests used to determine whether someone has used a certain drug within the last week or month, etc., there are no reliable tests to determine whether someone is under the influence right now. Thus, a lot of harm caused by other drugs gets ascribed to alcohol.
- dahfizz 6y agoThis is actually a big hurdle for legalization, IMO. I have friends who live in states where recreational marijuana is legal, but they can't smoke because their jobs do random drug tests. They do safety critical work where being under the influence can cause serious harm (think construction). It makes sense that the employer needs to make sure everyone is sober, but its a huge pain for everyone that the only way to make sure you are sober _right now_ is to make sure you've been sober all month.
- qwerty456127 6y agoThat's a weird chart there by the link. Tobacco can hardly cause any mortality in a direct way and if we consider indirect (via lung cancer) then we should also consider many other carcinogens. And if we swap it for pure nicotine (in form of a proper vape liquid, chewing gum or whatever) we hardly are going to detect any evidence of harm at all. Ecstasy can indeed cause health damage if used improperly (it can be neurotoxic if you overheat, it can weaken your immune system and let a virus in, it can cause depression-heavy hangover if you use it too often) but they say LSD is even more harmful for your heath and shrooms are comparably harmful! For fuck's sake, how? Needless to say LSD and shrooms have extremely low addiction potential, ecstasy having it slightly higher.
- Gibbon1 6y agoIf smoking just caused lung cancer that would be one thing. Most smokers never get lung cancer, they develop and die from cardiovascular disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.
- amelius 6y agoTitle should say "party/recreational drug" or "narcotic" instead of "drug".
- sterlind 6y agoNarcotic properly refers to opiates, though law enforcement and uses it to refer to all illegal drugs. Recreational drugs or drugs of abuse are more accurate.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoThe most heavily abused drugs are the legal ones. This fact for a long time made me an opponent of drug legalization. But the destruction of culture and civilization in all the transit and production countries (Mexico, Colombia, central america, southeast asia) made me realize we need to deal with our own problems with drug use in our populace and needed to destroy the economic rewards in shipping and production of narcotics. The main chart does not seem to include opioids aside from methadone, which are rampant in the US and responsible for the resurgence of heroin abuse.
- puppycodes 6y agoI feel like this graph is far too general to be useful
- Reedx 6y agoSocial media and 24hr news
- rp00 6y agoStatism is the most dangerous drug.