RIP Tom Petty (confirmed)

[ExiledInIllinois]

13 minutes ago, row_33 said:

 

Colleague’s kids aren’t dropping dead suddenly from ages 21-31 from alcohol the last few years

 

 

Rethink that.  They are getting vibrio while taking a dip.  Of course, after new tats and a few years of hard drinking:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/health/tattoo-infected-sepsis-death-vibrio-study/index.html

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by ExiledInIllinois

[DC Tom]

If you're going to compare alcohol to opioids, you have to remember:

 

1) Many, if not most, people who drink are not addicted to alcohol. Even binge drinking is not addictive behavior.  Conversely, no one is a "social" or "binge" heroin user.  The valid population for comparison is alcoholics to opioid addicts.

 

2) You have to exclude deaths from the side-effects of long-term alcohol abuse.  Cirrhosis, for example. is not a "direct death" from alcohol, as the article NG linked claims.  If you're going to include statistics on long-term effects of alcohol abuse causing death, then you have to include the statistics for deaths in heroid addicts from AIDS-related causes, hepatitis, endocarditis, renal failure.  Conversely, if you're going to limit opioid-related deaths to overdose (which currently defines "opioid epidemic"), you should limit your comparable alcohol deaths only to those deaths directly from acute alcohol poisoning.  Comparing "all alcohol-related deaths" to "illegal, injectable opioid overdoses" is epidemiologically invalid.  And stupid.

 

3) One of the main contributors to deaths in the current opioid epidemic is dealers cutting heroin with insanely dangerous and deadly elephant tranquilizer.  Not even the worst moonshiner in Appalachia is cutting his white lightning with dangerous and deadly methanol.  And if alcoholic beverages did start being cut with methanol in increasing amounts, I guarantee that we'd be hearing about a "methanol epidemic." 

 

It's not even an apples-to-oranges comparison.  More like apples to broccoli.