Newsbrief: WHO Says Licit Drugs Greater Health Threat Than Illicit Ones http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/329/who.shtml In a report released Thursday in Brasilia, the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) found that the negative health effects of legal drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, far exceeded those from illegal drugs. The report, the first of its kind by the WHO, explored advances in neuroscience in the treatment of drug dependence. "The main global health burden is due to licit rather than illicit substances," said the report. While the WHO put the number of illegal drug users worldwide at about 200 million, or 3.4% of the global population, it found that illegal drug use accounted for only 0.8% of global ill health in 2000. Alcohol, on the other hand, accounted for 4.1% and tobacco for 4.0%. "Health and social problems associated with use and dependence on tobacco, alcohol and illicit substances require greater attention by the public health community," WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-Wook said in a statement accompanying the report's release. The report singled out men living in wealthy countries as particularly vulnerable to tobacco- and alcohol-related health problems. The report, "The Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence," is only available by purchase. Visit http://www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2004/pr18/en/ to read the press release and executive summary online.
Alcohol and tobacco cause more health problems than all of the illegal drugs COMBINED?!? What a shock.
So that means it was a good decision to make those illegal drugs illegal, right? Obviously, that approach has worked in promoting the public health. Now, we just need to prohibit alcohol and tobacco.
Because we were sooooo successful in prohibiting alcohol LAST time, eh? Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. How exactly has that approach worked to promote the public health? There are FAR more overdoses and cross reactions now than there were when these drugs were legal in our country. That is ADDED to all the people who die every year as a result of the violence that is inherent in a prohibitionist system. Our drug policy could be much more effective at the goal of reducing drug use if we regulated and taxed the industry.
The fact that this is akin to saying the world isn't flat is offset by the fact that many seem to want to overlook it. The continuation of selective not to mention illogical double standards re: the selctive legal status of certain drugs has gone beyond puzzling and is approaching the ridiculous; that the supercorporatins and the polticians they own advocate the status quo is understandable; that millions who owe no allegiance to Big Tobacco, etc. also applaud their positions is like dirt poor farmers who support trickle down economics because the adocates are more their type of fellers...you wonder what kind of wake up call it would take to realize who does and who does not have an agenda in line with their needs.
Roommates. Am going to have to either re-install Windows, or buy another computer. Have been to busy to do either lately, but am leaning towards a new Dell. Any suggestions?
If you are going to buy a new computer then I highly recommend a Dell. I just bought 5 (for a business venture) and all we use at the college are Dells. Edit: I would try to reinstall Windows first, but I am a geek.
Lol. Because you keep starting these threads about the evils of the drug war, I felt like messing with ya. I figured I could get under your skin like that. But actually, I don't have any strong feelings in either direction on the drug war, so I won't be contributing anything that's useful to this thread.
Thanks for the softball. It doesn't really get under my skin because I know that every time someone uses an argument like that, my position gets that much stronger. I just feel that it is my duty to bring these things up so that more people will start to open their eyes. It is working, slowly but surely.
And yet more... Newsbrief: Fat & Sloth Kill 20 Times More People than Illegal Drugs, Study Finds http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/328/sloth.shtml For every American who died in the year 2000 because he got too high, more than 20 Americans died because they got too fat. That's according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which Wednesday published "Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," a study of "modifiable behavioral risk factors" that kill people. The study reported 2.4 million deaths in 2000 and found that nearly half of them were related to lifestyle or other risky behavior, which in this study includes getting killed in a car wreck or murdered. Not surprisingly, the leading lifestyle killer is tobacco, which accounted for more than 18% of all deaths that year, but sloth and piggery are running a close second and threaten to surpass tobacco, JAMA reported. Here are the lifestyle killers in rank order: tobacco: 435,000 deaths poor diet and physical inactivity: 400,000 alcohol: 85,000 microbial agents: 75,000 toxic agents: 55,000 motor vehicle crashes: 43,000 firearms deaths: 29,000 sexual behaviors: 20,000 illicit use of drugs: 17,000 "We found that about half of all deaths that occurred in the United States in 2000 could be attributed to a limited number of largely preventable behaviors and exposures," the authors commented. "Our findings indicate that interventions to prevent and increase cessation of smoking, improve diet, and increase physical activity must become much higher priorities in the public health and health care systems. "The most striking finding was the substantial increase in the number of estimated deaths attributable to poor diet and physical inactivity," they continued. "The gap between deaths due to poor diet and physical inactivity and those due to smoking has narrowed substantially. "It is clear that if the increasing trend of overweight is not reversed over the next few years, poor diet and physical inactivity will likely overtake tobacco as the leading preventable cause of mortality."
wait a second....i'm not arguing against your overarching concerns of the drug war, andy...but that might be the most misleading study i've ever seen if it's out to prove the assertion that being physically inactive is more dangerous to your health than messing with illegal drugs. this study assumes the same number of people that smoke cigarettes/have a poor diet/drink alcohol etc. also do illegal drugs. you can't take 1,000 people and say, "well less of them died from drug overdoses than from heart attacks....so it turns out that people dying from drug abuse really isn't all that big of a deal."
Actually, what this study does is put into perspective how many people die as a result of certain behaviors and lifestyle changes. If we are truly worried about saving lives, we would be better off spending the money on diet and exercise education or on fighting microbial agents. Most of the people who die from using drugs these days are a direct result of prohibition. We could reduce the deaths due to drugs by 90% or more by regulating the industry, and on top of that we could also reduce use by minors over the short term and eventually we could also dramatically reduce overall drug use.
