Why Alcohol is the Deadliest Drug

Opioids are highly addictive and are the leading cause of overdose deaths. Opioids can lead to confusion, nausea, constipation, coma and brain damage. Alcohol consumption is a leading preventable cause of death in the US, and death rates from fully alcohol-attributable causes have increased in the past decade, including among adults aged 20 to 64 years. However, a comprehensive assessment of alcohol-attributable deaths among this population, including from partially alcohol-attributable causes, is lacking.

Alcohol poisoning occurs when someone drinks so much alcohol that their blood-alcohol content rises to toxic levels. The body has a limited capacity to safely metabolize the toxins in alcohol, so too much alcohol can overwhelm the body’s systems. Alcohol poisoning is a major risk of binge drinking, or drinking large quantities of alcohol in a short span of time. In serious cases of alcohol poisoning, a person could enter a coma, stop breathing, or have a heart attack or seizure. Most people who die from alcohol poisoning are between the ages of 35 and 64.

Alcohol Data

But the estimated 95,000 annual alcohol-related deaths obviously tops the 93,331 fatal overdoses. More importantly, those alcohol results are from 2019 rather than 2020 and don’t take Covid into account. It’s more than quite likely alcohol vs drugs that once the pandemic is figured into the equation, the number of alcohol-related fatalities will unfortunately rise even further. Much ado is being made about last year’s increase in drug overdose deaths in the United States.

• 3,584 people pass away annually due to hypertension brought on by excessive alcohol consumption.
• We understand that everyone’s situation is unique, and this content is to provide an overall understanding of substance use disorders.
• Alcohol has shortened the lifespan of those 88,000 human beings by 30 years.
• In 2014, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 9,967 deaths .
• In 2005, 6.6% of the US population aged 12 or older, or 16 million people, reported heavy drinking .
• Make that an ever increasing danger, because those that binged at twice the threshold ended up 70 times more likely to have an alcohol-related emergency department visit.

There is also evidence that mortality rates from drug poisonings can differ substantially by racial and ethnic group. Even though many Muslim countries restrict drinking – especially underage drinking – the influence of alcohol on health and riminal behavior is rising in these countries as well. “Not enough countries use effective policies to prevent death, disease and injury attributable to alcohol consumption,” said the WHO report. An interesting point to note about the report, though, is it discusses the political aspects of alcohol consumption, such as raising taxes on alcohol, rather than discussing education and awareness campaigns for the treatment of alcohol dependence and abuse. In most cases, presenting findings from two different years would seem to benefit those with the most recent results. Granted, a binge drinking rate of 25.8% falls short of the predicted 29.4% rise in drug overdose deaths.

Health & Medicine

New Mexico has the highest death rate at 34.3 deaths per 100,000 people. 145 people die annually due degeneration of their nervous system from drinking alcohol. 18,164 people pass away annually due to alcoholic liver disease. How many rich folks would stop drinking if alcohol taxes were higher?

On a worldwide scale, more people are drinking alcohol than ever before. Alcohol is a more pervasive and widely-abused harmful substance than any illegal drug. In 2020, alcohol-related deaths rose 26%, claiming approximately 150,000 lives in the United States — almost 400 deaths per day — which is the highest rate recorded in at least 40 years.

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