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Comment by t4ng0pwn3d | Hacker News Reader

> Well, obviously, far more people drink alcohol than use those two.

But saying alcohol is the most dangerous drug with this definition is still fair enough to say right? Carfentanil is more potent than fentanyl, but fentanyl is on the streets so it's what we should crack down on.

Per capita, alcohol kills more people than any other drug in most countries. It's also one of two drugs where you can die from withdrawals, being more dangerous than crack or heroin to detox from. It's also the only drug you get advertised 24/7, and that is socially forced down your throat (literally).

Not to say alcohol isn't fun, but it is the most dangerous drug to society, statistically.

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>But saying alcohol is the most dangerous drug with this definition is still fair enough to say right?

This is conflating the difference between "danger" and "harm". Danger is a measure of risk, not damage.

You wouldnt say that drinking alcohol is more dangerous than drinking bleach or sulfuric acid, but it can be more harmful, if you are talking about rates.

No, tobacco products kill a lot more people, in the U.S. about 400,000 people a year--three to four times as many as alcohol.

> Per capita

Is this a good metric? For a potential drug consumer it is more relevant which health/social risk is involved if taking a certain drug once/sometimes/regularly.

Alcohol causes 5.3% of deaths globally. While at an individual level alcohol is only unhealthy on average, as a society its impact is pretty significant. While some drugs are definitely worse at an individual level, access and criminality should mean they're less of an issue. If we're going by purely individual risk not taking into account other factors then 14-Methoxymetopon is 10,000 times stronger than fentanyl.

The issue is the misleading presentation of it. The writer of the linked blogpost is either dishonest or already missing what you're saying.

>Next time someone tries to justify drinking alcohol, remember it causes cancer and other diseases, it’s three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco

I know people don't understand cumulative effect, and you know they don't understand per capita. It's just a dishonest way to present something. You could say it's fair that driving is more harmful than drunk driving, but that'd be misleading at best.

Sure you're right, but the conversation that heroin is more likely to kill you than alcohol is (or should be) obvious. However people don't seem to realise 3x more Americans die per year from alcohol overdoses than opioid overdoes or that it is the cause of 5.3% of deaths globally per year. Parents rarely buy their developing kids heroin to take to a party, and you rarely go out after work with your boss to see who can do the more lines of cocaine.

You're more likely to know someone who dies from alcohol than any other drug, if you don't already. And I say that as someone who lost a friend to heroin! So I get how bad it can be, and I get how fun alcohol can be, and how culturally accepted one is over the other, but damn alcohol is a deadly drug. Like I said in another comment, alcohol is one of two drugs you can die from withdrawals from too (the other being benzos, ironically what you get to help deal with alcohol withdrawal).

And I say this knowing I still fancy a beer after work! Because that's how ingrained this stuff is in our lives.

I would argue soda is a lot more impactful than alcohol if we talking about cumulative deaths, financial cost, or quality adjusted lives lost.

The reality is that there is many ways to compare the characteristics of different substances. There are long-term impacts, short-term impacts, ld50, moral impacts, dose control, chemical addiction potential, chemical addiction rate, Etc.

You have to understand all of these to make sense of why different chemicals might be considered differently.

Like it or not, When compared to a lot of drugs alcohol has a high ld50, High dose control, and low chemical addiction rate.

You are unlikely to OD on a drink because the dose was high and there is too much alcohol in it. You are unlikely to get chemical withdrawal and cravings from infrequent use.

This puts a lot more control in the hands of users which is an important moral and Regulatory consideration.

Utilitarian analysis of total death or cost to a very bad job of taking into account any of the moral considerations

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