Len;

Thank you for the data.

Here is an idea. Make it illegal to use alcohol, and legal to use drugs. Track the statistics concerning the data you defined over a period of time – say for five years. Then compare the number of deaths and the attributed cause with the figures of today. The question is what will happen?

We will have a war on alcohol (which this country did at one time about 80 years ago) and anyone can get drugs without a problem. My guess is we will have about the same number of deaths or perhaps more due to alcohol and a huge increase in drug related deaths.

In the end the choice to use alcohol or drugs is up to the individual. Law officials need the statistics to keep in business and justify there existence. Both products have negative effects on the individual, family and society.

What is often neglected is the cost of these products as related to what happens to babies born to drug addicts. Cooking your brain and body does not give a baby a good start in life. I think our approach to this problem is greatly flawed. Remove the cause or at least attempt to address it. This is not the solution law enforcement wants to hear. They only know about the “bad guys”.

Tom



>>As I understand there have been some studies that disprove this assertion. May I ask where you get your numbers from please or are you just repeating a sort of urban legend.
>
>The actual estimated figures given were reported by the Environmental Protection Agency : 3800 deaths due to lung cancer, 46000 deaths due to other causes - so just short of 50000. No reference was given to an actual report, but the book was published in 1991.
>
>A report from 1995, gives the following estimates : 3200 deaths due to lung cancer, 12000 deaths due to other cancers & 37000 deaths due to heart disease - so around 52000 deaths per year in the US.
>http://www.lipidforum.at/Wissenschaft/Experten/kritz1.htm
>
>Your National Institute on Drug Abuse give the following figures for 1992 : 132000 deaths from drug abuse, broken down as 107000 deaths from alcohol abuse & 25000 from other drug abuse. So alcohol claims 4 times as many lives as other drugs.
>http://165.112.78.61/EconomicCosts/Chapter5.html
>
>One estimate of deaths due to smoking in the US (other than passive smoking) is around 300000 (from same EPA report above, I believe). So (in round figures) there are around 500000 deaths in the US each year due to some form of drug abuse, 95% due to legal drugs & 5% due to illegal drugs. So maybe it is reasonable to review the legality of some (maybe all) currently illegal drugs.