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In before the lock... 
This conversation has derided itself from being a discussion about an article, to a discussion questioning then article, and now, in it's final beastly form, a flame war. Imagine that. Time to put your burning party hats away guys 
Next up on the docket:
justification and self-discipline
one you need more of, the other less... I'll let it be up to you guys to decide which gets beat with the nerf stick.
Just a couple of facts for you "anti-drug" people out there (this would classify under "justification" (note to self: need less of))
FACTS: There were about 3.2 million injuries and 41,821 people were killed in auto accidents in 2000 based on data collected by the Federal Highway Administration. It is estimated that 40% of all fatal car accidents involve alcohol. (or to be precise, in 2000 16,653 +4.2%)
508,000 alcohol accidents in the united states in 2000
There were 27,035 deaths in the United States from Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis (2001)
Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States (2001)
hmm, lets do a little math shall we
19,817
+27,035
x .96 (compensate for etd. increase (definitely innacurate, i just didn't want to look up the 2000 stats))
44,978
+16,653
61,631 deaths directly related to alcohol in 2000 (estimated, give or take 5%)
The population of the US on April 1, 2000 was 281,421,906
population age 18 and over : 209,128,094
Sixty-three percent of Americans ages 18 and over have drank alcohol in the past year (2001)
209,xxx,xxx
x .63
131,750,699
Okay, so out of those 132 million (rounded) drinkers, they killed collectively 61,631 people. Obviously the heavier/more irresponsible drinkers are affected disproportionately by this death category.
Since I was unable to find the statistic for how many drunken drivers were killed in auto accidents I'll just leave out alcohol death crashes altogether in the calculation but...
somewhere between one out of every 2,138 and one out of every 2,929 people who drink are killed due to an alcohol related problem/accident. If you're a heavy drinker, the situation is much, much more dire than that.
How many people did ecstasy kill in 2000.. get ready for this.. your not going to believe it
63 (20 in the uk)
?
63?
yeah, 63 reported deaths in the united states and 5000 emergency room. If the rates are as poor as alcohol related use deaths then that would leave somewhere between 150,000 and 170,000 ecstasy users in the united states. Which would hardly be considered an epedemic (more people died from alcohol in 2000 than used ecstasy if this is true). I suspect the figure is at least a 5 fold larger. The DEA probably has a good figure on this (based on seizures) if anyone wants to drag it up. It's probably even more than 500,000. If there was ONLY ~500k people using ecstasy in the year 2000 and only *63* people were reported to die from it, then, that would be one in every 8,000. Pretty fucking pathetic. To be fair though, it's hard to link MDMA related side effects back to the drug due to how little we know about it and the nature of it (unlike alcohol).
I found a little tidbit that, at least on the alcohol portion checks out with my quickly gathered data.
Putting things in perspective:
The death rate for MDMA, assuming that there really were about 60 deaths directly caused by MDMA in 2000, would be roughly 2 in 100,000 users. The death rate from smoking, by contrast, is on the order of 400 per 100,000 users. Even alcohol, America's official "it's not really a drug" drug, nets about 50 deaths per 100,000 users each year:[3]
So what should be illegal again???
___________________
| quote: | Venus: And there are troops of savage giraffes whose necks are on fire, like
the starry ejaculations of fireworks in the very pale sky of childhood
...
Venus: Enter, enter here - men of all kinds and races, victims of reality!
You who have the thirst for dreams.
...
Venus: You, on life's bitter road, drenched in hard sunlight who have the
thirst that once more the dark marvel of dreams... |
Last edited by SuperFarStucker on Dec-12-2003 at 04:43
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