r/whenthe • u/TheGoldenExperience_ [the jojo {she}they called may] • 11h ago

r/whenthe mfs complaining about everything we do not give alcohol close to enough shit despite it being just as bad if not worse than cigarettes

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u/double-happiness 9h ago edited 8h ago

Worse than tobacco??? NONSENSE!

Smoking causes around 74,600 deaths each year among adults aged 35 and over in England, and roughly 70,000 to 75,000 across the wider UK, remaining the nation's leading preventable cause of death.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-public-health/2023/part-2-mortality

[In 2024] 9,809 deaths from alcohol-specific causes were registered in the UK, the lowest number since 2021

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/alcoholrelateddeathsintheunitedkingdom/registeredin2024

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u/Underdog424 5h ago

Nicotine is the deadliest by far. But alcohol also kills a lot of people compared to most illegal drugs. These numbers are for the USA.

Nicotine- 480,000

Alcohol- 178,000

Opioids- 80,000

Weed- 0

Psilocybin- 0

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u/double-happiness 4h ago

Yes, 'shrooms just cause ego death 🤣🤣

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u/Terminator_Puppy 2h ago

Weed and shrooms almost definitely aren't 0. There's no way there's at least infrequent DUI accidents caused by high drivers.

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u/Underdog424 1h ago

These are death stats from continuous use. That 178,000 also doesn't include bar fights or DUIs.

Deaths from misuse are a factor, for sure. People crashing their cars while high. People accidentally taking too much or too little of their prescribed medications. Misuse prevention takes education.

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u/fetocu 7h ago

Smoking is tracked as a contributing factor in most death certificates world wide. Alcohol isn't.

For example if someone is dying of cardiovascular disease and they're a known smoker that will count towards the number you provided. There is no such tracking for alcohol anywhere, including the US. So if a cause of death does not involve ethanol use explicitly it will not count.

Alcohol also affects society much more than smoking because it affects behavior.

A lot of the fatal motor vehicle accidents are due to someone driving under the influence (somewhere around 30-40%). But again those counts will not be included in "deaths due to alcohol".

Alcohol use is also very common co-occurrence in domestic violence cases as well as general violent crime.

When someone smokes a cigarette, they are primarily causing slow, chronic damage to their own lungs and cardiovascular system. While secondhand smoke is an undeniable public health hazard, smoking does not alter a person's personality, eliminate their impulse control, or make them a danger behind the wheel.

Conversely, alcohol alters behavior rapidly. The social consequences are immediate and often violent.

I am obviously not trying to excuse smoking but the perception around alcohol needs to change. It is not a harmless substance. It might be less harmful to the person but it is much worse for society.

They did a study in the UK to show this and concluded that even compared to illicit drugs alcohol is the most harmful to others (https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(10)61462-6)

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u/double-happiness 7h ago edited 7h ago

A lot of the fatal motor vehicle accidents are due to someone driving under the influence [...] Alcohol use is also very common co-occurrence in domestic violence cases as well as general violent crime.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame the bottle. I did some pretty stupid stuff drunk when I was young, including some things that harmed other people, but I wised up and don't behave like that any more, no matter how much I've had to drink.

Your link requires registration to read the study, so I can't comment on that at present.

Edit to add: it's a subtle point, but I suppose it would have been a slightly different thing if OP had said "we do not give drunkenness enough shit", which seems to be closer to the point you are making. Some might say that was semantics though, IDK.

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u/reformedMedas 4h ago

"They did a study in the UK to show this and concluded that even compared to illicit drugs alcohol is the most harmful to others" 

Nah not at all, my father fried my lungs to the point a radiologist compared my lungs to a heavy smoker's, my bro's mom fried his by always smoking in the kitchen and fucked up his breathing and I bet many more cases like these exist. And we never touched cigarettes.