Most harmful drugs in New Zealand ranked
Alcohol is the most harmful drug in New Zealand, outranking illegal illicit substances, according to the latest research from the University of Otago.
A panel of 23 experts ranked alcohol as the most harmful overall, with methamphetamine coming in second, synthetic cannabinoids ranked third, and tobacco fourth, based on 17 different harm criteria.
The study, funded by the Health Research Council, involved the panel assigning a score to 23 drugs based on the harm caused to the user, harm caused to others as well as societal harm.
The criteria included drug-related mortality, drug-related damage, dependence, injury to others, crime, community damage and economic cost.
Overall, alcohol was ranked as the most harmful to the user, and most harmful to others, driven by high scores in drug-related mortality and community damage.
This CAN NOT actually surprise anyone can it?
Of course booze is the worst drug and we are a nation of alcoholics!
Look, as an Alt-Left Marxist Anarchist, this is what I’ve come to understand – the State’s Jackboot is endless and all powerful but too often it is trained on the throats of the common citizen!
We need to use the Neo-Gramscian Counter-Hegemonic method of turning the State’s Jackboot on the Corporations, the 1%, the banks and the speculators to fund the environmental, social and Degrowth economic infrastructure required for radical climate change adaptation.
There are also some products, like gambling, tobacco, prostitution and booze that we agree to legalise as a civil society because leaving it unregulated allows organised crime to move in and cause far more social carnage.
We should include a sugar tax as well!
We accept their products are addictive and have social damage, which is why we regulate them with the Jackboot of the State on their throat!
In short, the Booze Barons should get a bashing!
Slash their advertising, get them out of supermarkets, immediately curtail their bottleshops, make them donate to Alcoholics Anonymous and just because they need to know who is in charge, extract a vice tax that comes off the top of their profit margin to help pay for the true damage their product causes.
The profit margins of these legal drug pushers should be taxed so that the end user isn’t punished, but the corporation behind them are.
Stopping these booze pimps misusing the legal process to extend booze licences is an outrageous abuse of power they should never have had in the first place, but it’s just the start.
Get that booze out the of bloody supermarkets!
We are a nation of bloody alcoholics and we’ve made getting booze as easy as possible when it’s a product that can cause enormous damage.
Fuck convenience, you want a drink, work for it.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations!
Side note – MDMA, Cannabis and Acid are almost good for you in comparison!
There is amazing and ground breaking research into micro dosing and treatment for depression using hallucinogens and a functioning Cannabis market could generate $1.1billion in revenue, $150million of which could be used annually for drug rehabilitation (including booze) especially when we only currently spend $15million a year on all drug rehabilitation.
There are new frontiers we could be focused on with drugs while making things far tougher for the bad drugs like booze!
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Crikey! Imagine a dry sober year in a dry sober New Zealand.
No thanks
The neo-temperance movement has arisen, this time with an alt-left Marxist face.
Martyn – Agreed…hence why it was very sad to see the Cannabis vote just fail…In certain States within the USA, alcohol sales have dropped, while Cannabis sales are increasing – violent crime has dropped too
Exactly Nathan. All these dicks that treat weed like it’s satanic are ignoring reality. In fact one wonders how the world didn’t stop turning prior to all these drugs being made illegal. The world seemed no worse off pre moves to make certain drugs illegal, and banning was nothing to do with health or societal issues.
Big pharma good, beer bad. At the end of the day the puritans wanna take your choices away.
off white…big pharma bad…alcohol pushers BAD TOO
BOTH are predatory
there fixed that for you
Gaga, you’ve been pretty a okay with big pharma pushing experimental crap on us.
its your only legal available drug. Seriously dude, are you losing it?
Alcohol may be our worst just because most of us consume it.
Yes Andrew agree.
If as many people used meth as consume alcohol the statistics would tell a completely different story.
Booze is good for our mental health. It’s here to stay. Without it how would we laugh and have a good time.
Cheap beer in super market s is the only thing that is affordable. I am only suprised they don’t have the grog stacked at the entrance of the place.
“Without it how would we laugh and have a good time.”
Was that a quote from Jake the Mus?
Society likes the pro work and consumer drugs: Coffee and nicotine are the stimulants that fuel the working week, the carrots dangled in front of the worker: “Coming up it’s smoko time on the rock”. While alcohol stops the worker from thinking on the weekend, it shuts down his brain first via intoxication and then via hangover. Then its back to work on Monday: “Coming up it’s smoko time on the rock”… the cycle repeats.
But drugs like cannabis, MDMA and LSD open the mind and facilitate deep thinking. These drugs run the risk of the worker not only thinking, but also of gaining insights and worst of all of him questioning things. Questioning whether spending the best years of his life working in a job he hates, saving up for things he does not really want nor need is really such a great idea after all. So these drugs are prohibited.
Health has nothing to do with it, it’s more about keeping the rich rich and the poor drunk. And looking after vested interests.
I’ve been sober for 15 months and I feel great
Wait cannabis is worse than solvents and benzos? Almost an argument for keeping it illegal.
Who was responsible for allowing off-licences to be inside grocery stores in the first place? And why were slot machines suddenly allowed outside of casinos?
It seems pretty obvious from such charts that police would be wasting their time worrying about cannabis or M.D.M.A. All of their energy needs to be spent on smashing the cartels that are dealing fentanyl and crystal meth.
It raises the question of whether both cannabis and M.D.M.A. should be entirely legalised. The T.G.A. also approved the first prescription psychedelics earlier this week.
CHEERS!!!
“alcohol the most damaging”
Oh well, deal with alcohol and something else will become the most damaging.
How to make an artificial shock-horror headline.
The real measure is the actual extent of damage, not the ranking.
You fail to mention that booze pays $1.3b in vice tax already through excise. Directly pays $11m in levy for health promotion and not to mention the GST, employment in agriculture through wine and hops. Export of wine and the ensuing tourism. Also, have a look at the actual study and you’ll see its a panel of of people who have a preconceived view of a number of these substances, from specialists to out and out temperence campaigners, then them ‘ranking’ how they think somthing causes harm. One of the ranking criteria is spiritual ham. I mean really!! Thats a pretty thin system of actually quantifying things. I’m all for evidence-based regulation, but if this is your basis for the jackboot of the state intervening more than the highly regulated, highly taxed system currently applied to alcohol. I wonder how you justify consistantly argue for the need of better evidenced policy in all other areas from oposition parties or those callong for change.
+1
meanwhile we are all over vaping…which has NO bad health effects (only ‘experts think’ and ‘teachers say’) go figure…the vape industry needs to match the brewers brown envelopes
Next they will be telling us that smoking is bad.
We get that the borderline personalities running the current shit show are wowsers who want to dismantle the “old ways” in order to embrace our new vegan alphabet carbon free bike riding utopia.
Someone’s plugging the ant alcohol stuff in the media again.
Is there anything fun that we are to be allowed to do except for sex with transvestites?
Speaking of drugs.
What about puberty blockers? Those things are good for kids right?
Alcohol and the ills from it are fine. Why? Because so much of our economy depends on it.
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than an frontal lobotomy.
Whether a community gets yet another vape store, booze barn, pokie outlet, fast food joint should be entirely over to that community, the people who live there. Not the people with endless money to challenge these places.
All of it should be decriminalised and made health issues, just like Portugal and now some States in the US are doing.
I think there is a lot of sense in that
we are a nation of boozers—-
party zone = avoid street full of falling down drunks
Many of those who drink alcohol, often times in excess, are often the first ones to damn those people who smoke cannabis but may not touch alcohol.
I’ll drink to that
And one day there will be ”Weed Barons”…as there are Booze Barons.
Weed is good used wisely.
Alcohol is good used wisely.
Food is good used wisely…and so on.
Now we have to work our the formulation/equation perhaps
The great ills of auld Scotland — drink, violence, chdn outside marriage. Inextricably intertwined.
If National and Act were serious about crime they would deal with the sacred drug. But they’re just trying to raise up the necessary votes to do their ever and on short-term thing.
“We accept their products are addictive and have social damage, which is why we regulate them”
Also we don’t prohibit them just regulate them because not all gamblers and drinkers are addicts and we aren’t down with wowserism. No sane kiwi wants a country where the state is using a jack boot.
And try to remember alcohol is a good thing – because without it ugly people, nerds, incels and wall flowers don’t get laid.
NZ swings like a pendulum do, Ambulances, police cars two by two etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I7yAC1Pz6Y
More control on booze would be good. But let’s not go too far. And let’s have some of that excise money put into men’s and women’s houses where people who are certified drunkies can have a safe place and a warm bed with mattress covered in plastic for when they urinate or defecate from losing control of body functions. This is reality all you freedom-lovers. I agree don’t have the puritan lot in, and cut the jobs that surround the industry.
Just called into a local small friendly bar and met old seaman who finds the warm, friendly atmosphere enjoyable and it eases his arthritis or whatever. What we need is a little less laissez faire. Perhaps something to eat needs to be sold with drink – crackers and cheese? And that isn’t crackers either. Wouldn’t have to be baked. and cheese squares could be an industry provision cut from bulk blocks and not expensive.
I don’t really drink much but I like the fact I can whenever I want to – leave it alone. The tax tonight added with inflation sucks enough. Individual choice is paramount.
If your not drinking …your Vaping Andy.
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