There is no scientific basis for the drug war. Deciding if a drug is illegal (or restricting its use) has nothing to do with the number of people who die after using that drug.
You can compare alcohol to just about any other drug, and the drug will always do less damage than alcohol. And yet, alcohol will always be legal. It seems that the legal standing of a drug is only part of the reason that people will use and abuse it.
http://www.ncadd.org/blogs/in-the-news/alcohol-related-deaths-highest-in-35-years
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC,) there were 30,000 American deaths from alcohol-induced causes in 2014. The CDC report notes that the deaths included alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis, liver damage primarily caused by drinking.
In an article published by Medical Daily, that information translates to 9.6 deaths from alcohol-induced causes per 100,000 people, a figure that has risen 37 percent since 2002. These alarming numbers don’t even include deaths from drunk driving, and other accidents or homicides committed under the influence of alcohol…
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics
Nearly 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In 2014, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 9,967 deaths (31 percent of overall driving fatalities).
I don’t think that deaths due to opioids will ever be more than just a fraction of those from alcohol. But do you hear any of the media talking about the epidemic of alcoholism in this country? No, we only hear about the opioid and heroin “epidemic.” Why is that?
No matter the reason, it all stinks of hypocrisy. Wanna talk about sugar?
I’ll tell you what, when you restrict the use of painkillers, the use of alcohol (and sugar) will only increase further. But that’s okay with the CDC, FDA, and DEA.
All Things Chronic 
I did a paper in college years ago, and we had to compare the damage/deaths from the two *legal* drugs tobacco and alcohol, along with heroin, cocaine, and pot. Wanna guess which were the worst?
I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
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I think they should make alcohol an illegal drug, it’s awful, stinky stuff. And legalize marijuana (completely), which is also kind of stinky, but doesn’t throw people into alcohol induced rages, or become abusive, or violent, or dangerous to themselves and others.
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They tried that once. It didn’t work. Just created a huge black market and a lot of unnecessary deaths, imprisonments, and a culture of heroism, good guy-bad guy drama, and now that prohibition is repealed, people can ruin their lives legally. I myself have an ounce of Ouzo every night before bed, because I love the taste. I wouldn’t want to have to give up my nightcap just because of the millions upon millions of cases of alcohol related morbidity and mortality….
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Drug use and abuse is not about any particular drug. It’s a symptom of bigger problems in our society, but it’s also about our DNA. Part of my DNA is Irish, so you’d think I’d be a drinker, but I’m not. I drank socially when I was young, but alcohol is not a part of my social life anymore (probably because I don’t have one).
The fact is, there will always be a percentage of people who suffer from addictions, including to stinky alcohol and cigarettes. Advocating for total abstinence is not logical, just like making certain drugs illegal doesn’t make sense either.
Too bad the psychiatric community hasn’t created an addiction to guns. Maybe then we’d have a reason to restrict their use.
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Agreed. Nobody gets stoned and beats their spouse!
I think it was George Carlin that said” stoned people don’t run red lights, but they might wait for the stop sign to change to green!”
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**Guilty!** Actually I became fascinated with a traffic light once, many years ago, in the middle of the night, when it was raining. I sat there and watched it go through a few cycles and then a cop came along and wanted to know if I was all right! Scared me to death. I left when green came around again 😨
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Cops are scary. Pot is not. 🙂
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I have been writing about this all over the place, especially in the comments of medical articles doing “Reefer Madness” type scare stories (did you know that there is a 0.4% increase in high school dropout rates in states with mmj programs? That’s a number that’s well within scientific error, completely meaningless, yet a peer-reviewed journal published it, saying the trend was an ominous portent of no-account young people being created due to having a medical marijuana law in their state. Absurd.)
Alcohol is the single most important precipitating cause, along with tobacco, in cancers of the entire GI tract, of course including the liver and pancreas. The human and economic cost of alcoholism is astronomical. Family violence, work and school absenteeism, etc etc, plus of course accidents that range from motor vehicles to the thousands of boating fatalities to ATV wrecks, and even chainsaw accidents…I’ve seen them all. I’ve seen toddlers die from falling into 5 gallon buckets full of melted ice while their parents partied hard. And of course there are countless rapes and murders under the influence. You got me started….
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