Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
No it isn't. It's only "true" if you embrace statistics that can be manipulated like play-dough

I'm completely over this game where we compare booze and cigarettes to hard drugs.
How many families do you suppose are negatively influenced by alcohol?

Quote Originally Posted by JKDS
Many deaths from alcohol are from drunk driving, due to the impairing effects of alcohol. I don't see why "heroin driving", "meth driving", etc would be less dangerous than drunk driving.
Many more deaths are from liver failure, stroke, heart failure and other related diseases that occur as a consequence of alcoholism.

Clearly, heroin is dangerous. You arnt going to smoke a single cigarette or drink a single beer and suddenly die. Heroin, on the ither hand, carries such a risk.
This is not quite true. Smoking heroin carries very little risk of OD. Injecting it, that's different. That's where the real risk of OD is. Of course, if it were legal, then we would should expect people to be educated honestly about this seemingly trivial matter. But it's not trivial, because there's a huge difference between smoking and injecting heroin. Not all heroin addicts actually cross that line, it would be impossible to give an actual figure but I am aware of plenty of addicts who only smoke the shit. It's rife in my town, but OD's are rare.

Another factor to consider is that most people who are addicted to heroin also drink alcohol in excess, so it's very difficult to know what's actually doing the most damage to them on a long term basis.

People assume heroin is more dangerous because the effects are more profound and people inject the stuff. Well of course it's more dangerous where you're injecting it. But where you're smoking it, no, it's not more dangerous than alcohol. What is more dangerous is the willingness to do it in the first place, knowing the addictive nature of the drug.