Alcohol and tobacco are no less harmful than illicit drugs
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans, and millions worldwide, die from the effects of legally sponsored and government subsidized addictive substances. Illicit drugs were responsible for only a fraction of that amount, even if you include the associated homicide rate among drug users and dealers.
Yet, large multi-national corporations continue to foist upon the public extremely toxic and addictive substances, free from the threats of recrimination or prison. These products are dispensed from legally sanctioned outlets, duly taxed and often partially subsidized by tax dollars. They are allowed to advertise, frequently to highly impressionable teens and young adults and otherwise flaunt their products in public places.
They sponsor parades, sporting events, TV shows and practically any manner of public activity imaginable. All the while, their products continue to debilitate and kill their clientele to the tune of many millions of people, worldwide, each year. The afflictions are many and the toll on the world's healthcare systems is staggering.
Alcohol is known to cause serious mental degeneration, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, ulcers and other maladies. It is directly responsible for a large proportion of all traffic accidents and fatalities, as well as a large percentage of assault, battery, rape and domestic violence. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome has been found to affect many thousands of children each year, causing children to be born with extremely serious mental and physical birth defects and deficiencies.
"Excessive alcohol consumption leads to more than 100,000
deaths annually in the US. Accidents, mostly from drunken driving,
made up a quarter of this number in 1992; alcohol related homicide
and suicide accounted for 11 and 8 percent, respectively. Cancers
that are partly attributable to alcohol, such as those of the
esophagus and larynx, contributed an additional 17 percent. About
19 percent resulted from alcohol-related stroke. Another major
contributor is a group of 12 ailments wholly caused by alcohol,
of which alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and alcohol dependence
syndrome are the most important. These 12 ailments represented
18 percent of all alcohol related deaths in 1992."
Tobacco and tobacco products have been shown to also cause birth
defects, premature births, lower birth weights, emphysema and
bronchitis. In addition, smoking or chewing tobacco causes cancers
of the mouth, nose, throat, esophagus and lungs of the users as
well as to those who are exposed to smoke on a secondary basis.
"Tobacco related diseases claim the lives of more than four million people in the world every year. Most tobacco firms found a ready market in developing countries whose economies relied on revenue from tobacco products and advertisements from the companies. It is ironical that a lot of funds were spent on medical research to find a cure for cancer, while tobacco firms pumped colossal sums in advertisements of products identified as leading causes. The gains in terms of revenue are much lower compared to medical costs in the long term. 'Companies come up with advertisements that mislead the youth into believing that those who smoke are sportsmen and stars in life in order to market the products.''
The following table shows the annual number of deaths related to tobacco, alcohol, hard drugs, XTC and cannabis, for several countries. Due to uncertainties in criteria use by the providers of the data, figures are uncertain and at best coarse approximations, and are not all for the same years. They have been rounded off. The hard drug data are for 1991, and are from a UN report. UK alcohol and tobacco data from DEA (1990). Note that cannabis data are not given: no death reports are known for cannabis.
| Country | Tobacco | Alcohol | Hard Drugs |
| United States | 400,000 | 100,000 | 6000 |
| France | ? | ? | 400 |
| Germany | ? | ? | 2100 |
| Britain | 110,000 | 30,000 | 300 |
| Netherlands | 20,000 | 2000 | 40 |
Although the data are of uncertain reliability, from these and other data it is clear that the death toll for alcohol is many times as large as the figure for hard drugs. Moreover, the death toll for tobacco exceeds the figures for all other substances combined (which consists mainly of alcohol deaths) by a factor of four or more. Data for cannabis are completely insignificant when compared to these figures. Finally, for cannabis, we have to resort to comparison with ... potatoes. A quote from the DEA: "In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough cannabis to induce death."
While I do not necessarily condone or promote the use of illicit drugs, my sense of justice is piqued by the inequities of modern societies' drug laws. Many of these drugs, with the exception of the new "designer," drugs, have been in use for many thousands of years without necessitating regulation or restriction. It is because society has currently deemed certain substances as taboo that we have the highest percentile prison population. The illegality of these substances seems to me to cause far more social ill, overall, than the actual use or even abuse. The incidence of crime that is related to illicit drugs in this country is alarming and brings to mind the utter failure of the Prohibition Era of the 1930's. We are rapidly becoming the world leaders in percentages of imprisoned population, mostly due to arcane and possibly racially unjust drug laws. I will save that issue for a later paper.
Given the figures quoted here, I would say that the legal substances are far worse than their illicit counterparts, by any measure. Given their almost universal use, alcohol and tobacco most probably cause more death, despair and destruction than all of our so-called illicit drugs combined.
Certainly, there is no logical argument in favor of condoning, promoting or fostering the use of any detrimental substances. However, society should no longer show preference to some substances and deference to others. Nor should society continue ill-fated attempts to regulate and control private morality. Rather, it should endeavor to educate its citizens, particularly the young, and effectively arm them with the tools to fight the allure of substance abuse, entirely. I sincerely believe that all things on this earth have a purpose, however malignant or benign. It is only man who continually misuses these things for misguided purposes. Ingenious, aren't we?
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