Using data from 2013, The Young Turks compiled a list of the deadliest drugs and the results may surprise you.
Coming in at number six is marijuana with a staggering 0 deaths. Zero. Zip. Nada. Totally seems like a dangerous substance that should be outlawed in most of the country, despite scientific data supporting that marijuana is not the monster that it has been portrayed as. A study this week stated that marijuana, even when used regularly by teens, posed no psychological or health risks.
Cocaine took away the lives from 4,944 Americans in 2013, and heroin killed 8,257.
Then there’s a huge spike in deaths with opioid-based prescription painkillers 16,235. The CDC found that 31 percent of prescription painkiller–linked overdose deaths in 2011 were related to benzodiazepines, a legal anti-anxiety drug. Last month, we talked about how people are getting addicted to opioid prescription painkillers and how heroin overdoses have quadrupled since 2002.
The runner-up is alcohol with 29,001 people killed. Now to be fair, a shit-ton more people are drinking alcohol than anything else so the chance for a deadly encounter is far, far greater. The U.S. population was 316.5 million in 2013. In the same year, 86.8 percent of people ages 18 or older reported that they drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime. So if my math is correct, 273,854,000 Americans got liquored up, so actually 29,001 deaths from alcohol seems like a realistically low number considering all of those blackout sots falling down stairs, doing dumb shit and being a complete asshole by driving drunk. If 273,854,000 people were shooting up heroin there would be many more fatalities.
And the number one deadliest drug is…. TOBACCO! When it comes to drugs killing people, tobacco is king. Tobacco-caused health problems such as lung cancer and heart disease kill more Americans than reported drug overdoses, traffic accidents, and homicides COMBINED. That ridiculous kill tally means that one in five deaths in the US each year is linked to tobacco usage.
Be safe out there this weekend and don’t become a statistic.