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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3234 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Imagine if the media covered alcohol like other drugs

Does that only measure direct harm, such as hitting your wife in a drunken rage, or does it measure indirect harm as well? Does becoming a financial burden to your family members/the healthcare system or inadvertently spreading blood borne diseases through sharing dirty needles or broken crack pipes count as harm? What about people who steal to support their habits? I ask because there is a huge distinction. Where I live, there is a huge issue with heroin, meth, and crack cocaine and the problems these drugs are causing is widespread and terrifyingly palpable.

Not a criticism of you tauta_krypta or a defense of alcohol use, but a serious inquiry into what that graph actually illustrates.





tauta_krypta  ·  3234 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The paper's here. I haven't read it in detail, but it should include the examples you mentioned (harm to the community, economic cost, family adversities and crime are all categories they considered). Clearly it's going to be subjective to some extent, but given that it was published in The Lancet and I've seen it quoted quite a few times, I presume it was reasonably well done.