Alcohol a Bigger Threat to U.S. Youth Than [Illegal] Drugs

[tuvor]

THURSDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News) -- Alcohol abuse by minors results in almost 3,200 deaths a year -- four times more than deaths due to all illegal drug use combined, a new study finds.

Underage drinking also costs the United States $62 billion each year, the researchers found.

Despite these numbers, policymakers remain focused on the impact and prevention of drug use in minors, rather than alcohol, the study's authors said. The budget for anti-drug use by America's youth is nearly 25 times that of public funds earmarked for the prevention of alcohol use.

"Alcohol-related traffic crashes, violence, teen pregnancies, STDs, burns, drownings, alcohol poisoning, property damage and other risks take a human and economic toll that's much greater than illegal drugs. Yet, we spend so much more on youth drug abuse," study author Ted Miller, director of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), said in a prepared statement.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20060629/hl_hsn/alcoholabiggerthreattousyouththandrugs

[Dark]

1. Of course, the policymakers get money from Budweiser, Coors, etc.

n/t

[Quakerfriend]

3. Got that right.

Having worked in healthcare for years, I must say that alcohol is BY FAR the worst drug.

[KyuzoGator]

2. It's a bigger threat to adults, too.

Alcohol kills more people each year than all illegal drugs combined.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. If I could legally smoke

I wouldn't drink

[liberaltrucker]

15. Me either

Ubfortunately, my job requires random piss tests.
Alcohol is out of my systen the next morning.
THC, being fat soluble, is quite another matter.

Gawd, DU needs a smiley for :hippocracy:(sp).

[TexasLawyer]

4. hard alcohol ads

I hate the fact that companies can now advertise hard alcohol on TV.

To impressionable teens, it sure looks fun to drink and party!

The focus on the family-types who wrote and called the FCC by the 100s of thousands when Janet Jackson had her "wardrobe malfunction" are now completely ignoring the REAL obscenity.

[kenny blankenship]

9. It has really worked too, Americans are drinking much more liquor vs. beer

than before the tv advertizing ban was rescinded.

[pnwmom]

13. When did that happen? Weren't ads banned from TV?

My teenage son actually mentioned that to me, because he had noticed them.

[undergroundpanther]

6. Alcohol leads to alot more

Rapes,abuse,broken families..I hate alcohol.Because more often than not it makes people into assholes,they lose their sense of judgment,They lose the inhibitions that keep them from being an asshole when they are sober,and it is just an evil substance when people don't understand why they want to drink it until they are trashed and sick..
I had one hangover in my life,when I was miserable,I realized I had poisoned myself. Never again.And I don't drink because it's miserable for me.I'd rather find out what is making me emotionally in pain instead of drugging or drinking it away.

The scariest part to me is it's not enough for some people being sick and miserable to tell them to stop,they keep drinking the shit, build up tolerance all to avoid the things in their lives that make them hurt so they seek to run away,and than,it goes to shit not only for themselves but for everyone else around them.Drugs and booze take a terrible toll, on kids, parents families,all relationships,..It hurts more people than just the addict.I hate it.

[Divernan]

11. Alcohol certainly does turn people into assholes - explosive tempers & all

I have absolutely no use for alcoholics in either my personal or professional life. They cannot be depended upon to "be there" in any capacity for the people in their lives. They either don't carry through on their commitments and responsibilities, or they do so in such a way that fucks everything up.

Even more pathetic than the alcoholics who screw up their own and others' lives, are the people who enable alcoholics. "You know, the apologists who say, well he didn't MEAN all those horrible things - he was just drunk! You can't blame him for getting drunk!. . . .(and/or) well, when he sobered up he did apologize!" Typically, this kind of enabler is someone who also drinks to excess or had a caretaker/parent who was an alcoholic. Such enablers go through life looking for screwed up drunks to defend! I knew one young woman whose mother drank herself to death. This very talented woman worked a second job as a bartender (she didn't need the money - she needed to take care of drunks the way she used to take care of her mother). The enabler finds it too frightening to accept the reality of how useless a drunk is, so they make endless excuses for them.

When someone who drinks has degenerated to the point that they screw up the first time, the only solution for them is to TOTALLY stop drinking. AA and AlAnon have that right.

[kenny blankenship]

7. Hasn't this always been the case?

to one degree or another of overwhelming conclusiveness down through the decades?

[Asgaya Dihi]

8. That's a fact

There's a chart on a web resource I use that shows the deaths of alcohol compared to all illegal drugs combined. Cumulative deaths from 1979 through 1998 for alcohol alone was 378,960, all illegal drugs combined had a total of 48,265.

http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/drug-death.htm

Most charts are click-able and lead to more info. Great site overall. This has all been about racism and politics, not about the health of our kids. Death rates have climbed through the war on drugs rather than fallen and that doesn't seem to disturb us much. Better dead than high I guess.

[acmejack]

12. That is a cool page

Thanx for the link

[LiberalPartisan]

10. Alcohol has always been the worst

Because so many people use and abuse it. So many 'functional' alcoholics literally teetering on the edge of losing everything.

FYI:
If you've ever wondered to yourself if you have a drinking problem you know the answer and the answer is yes.
If you've had the next day regrets or the 'oh nos' more than once in the last year you have a drinking problem.
If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably an alcoholic.
If you think you have it under control ask those who know you their honest opinion - they'll tell you they've known you have a problem for a long timne.

It's that simple.

If any of this resonates with you please seek help.

[SensibleAmerican]

14. I wonder if drugs were legalized, would the death from drugs be higher?

I don't know the answer to this question.

[Asgaya Dihi]

16. Doubtful, but it depends

Free use would probably work out badly, in an experiment called needle park they tried to just ignore the junkies and it started to get ugly before they shut it down. On the other hand they followed that with a program that's been very successful and reduced the damage by quite a bit. It was recently profiled in the British medial journal The Lancet, here's a quick summary of the article.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/439/swissresults.shtml

On the other hand our death rates have climbed over the years. Remember Len Bias, the basketball star who died of crack and triggered the round of "tough on crime" and mandatory minimum laws? The part that everyone seems to forget is that he probably didn't have to die, they waited too long to get help out of fear of the law. Death rates have climbed over the years due to fear of the law, unknown purity leading to accidental overdose, and due to bad reactions to contaminants. Here's the record with the main two, heroin and cocaine. Death up by seven times and more. If regulated intelligently there's good reason to think death would go down by a fair bit, not up. Prohibition has driven death rates up.

Cocaine in graph form
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/cocaine.htm
By raw numbers and rates
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/cdc/cocaine-yr.htm
Opiates in graph form (heroin)
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/opiates.htm
By raw numbers and rates
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/cdc/opiates-yr.htm

edit to correct link

[newyawker99]

18. Hi SensibleAmerican!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[WindRavenX]

17. how many people died from pot?

fucking 0.


Alcohol is absolutely the bigger threat.

[Theres-a]

19. None.They hardly leave their mom's basement.

[Asgaya Dihi]

21. Not exactly true ;)

Here's a glimpse of the other side, including such rabble rousers as Margret Mead, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, William F Buckley Jr, Carl Sagan and even a couple of familiar names such as George Washington and William Shakespeare as possibles with explanation.

http://www.veryimportantpotheads.com/main2.htm

[WindRavenX]

24. so all potheads are lazy eh?

Mkay :eyes:

[RB TexLa]

23. You think no one has ever died from a car accident while driving

stoned?

[WindRavenX]

26. (I was talking about a straight OD)

Because binge drinking is a huge problem of alcohol-- Several of my friends have had alcohol poisoning.

And of course people have died as a result of being over the influence and driving-- you should only drive sober, no matter what the substance :hi:

[RB TexLa]

27. Just checking because I'm sure all the alcohol numbers have

such included in them.

[WindRavenX]

29. to OD on pot...

I'm fairly certain you need to smoke a literally impossible amount of mj...

[RB TexLa]

31. I'm sure

I was just lurking this thread, I thought you were probably thinking medical deaths. Just all alcohol related numbers always includes accidental costs, not making any argument on the actual topic of the thread just a little "apples and oranges" in including accidental costs.

:)

[WindRavenX]

32. lol, no prob bro

Peace. I just get a little pissy when people start bashing mj or lump it with coke and herion :D

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Sure.

But has anybody been in an accident because they were stoned?

[RevolutionStartsNow]

20. Not surprising at all, but I don't want my kids doing either...

As a parent of one kid right on the brink of all of this (14) and another heading there quickly, I honestly don't want my kids drinking OR doing drugs. If forced to choose, I suppose I'd rather have them smoking pot than drinking (knowing that there are far worse dangers from alcohol), but I'd rather not choose at all.

[ProfessorGAC]

22. Well Duh!

This has been true for the last 40 years. And researchers have been publishing this same finding since the 60's!

I have to say i don't believe the $62 billion figure. I know how these numbers are calculated (they use the same methodology as the drug warriors) and there is extensive double counting and unsupportable assumptions. (For instance, if someone misses a day of work because of drinking or drug use, the assumption is that ALL productivity for that person is lost for the entire day. When, in fact, several studies have shown that short term absences are made up, in the overall, by others in the workplace to an average of abot 88%. So, that assumption is patently false. I'm no fan of the Cato Institute, but this study is in their archives. I believe it to be statistically and scientifically valid. Another is that drug use and drug abuse are equivalently impacting on economic and financial results.)

Of course, i still buy that alcohol is a far bigger problem amongst minors than is illegal drug use. That part seems intuitively obvious.
The Professor

[dysfunctional press]

25. duh...

nt

[JHB]

30. How does this stack up against Europe?

What counts as "underage" here isn't the same.