Do you believe racism exists and is a problem in the US medical system?

There is no useful discussion about the dangers of consuming a substance if quantities aren't mentioned.

Easy to look up amount of people killed by drunk drivers and compare that to cocaine overdoses

“ About 31% of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with BACs of .08 g/dL or higher). In 2021, there were 13,384 people killed in these preventable crashes. In fact, on average over the 10-year period from 2012-2021, about 10,850 people died every year in drunk-driving crashes.”

That wouldn't tell you which substance is more damaging for your body same as total death count from COVID and ebola don't tell you which disease is more lethal if you get it.

And again it always depends on quantities for substances.

To be able to claim "x is worse than y for human consumption" you actually have to state "x consumed k times per year in z quantities has in aggregate worse outcomes than y consumed q times per year in w quantities".

Otherwise you are just spitting random claims with no truth value

The "American government" bears no responsibility for anything. All decisions are made by people.

Which people alive today do you believe were responsible for the genocide of native Americans?

The counterfactual you need is a society where cocaine is legal everywhere, and an intoxicating dose (say several grams) costs like a bottle of cheap liquor and can be bought everywhere 24/7.

Then you wait a decade or two and measure which is worse for society.

Otherwise you are saying look this thing that costs 50-100x, and you risk losing your job and jail if you try to buy, to be able to intoxicate yourself is less damaging for society right now! which might be true but you don't know yet.

I'm pretty sure 99% of people would agree with me. The burden is on you if you want to claim differently.

A single moderate use of cocaine can be disastrous and makes people do far more dangerous things than moderate use of cocaine. It's also far more likely to lead to addiction.

Please do not respond to this with total number of deaths or addictions attributed to each product. In total alcohol definitely causes more problems in the US, but that is because it is far more popular, which in turn is partially because it is legal.

I don’t think so man

I agree with Lucium mostly on this. Cocaine isn’t that dangerous. Fentanyl is. Alcohol is dangerous on its own and lots of people die because of it. Some people get addicted to coke and become coke heads plus you die earlier from heart issues

Alcohol kills sooner and much more forcefully

I don't even know why you think fentanyl is that dangerous. I see people using it openly on the streets of Portland, but they aren't acting crazy or attacking anyone.

Alcohol doesn't kill anyone who hasn't drank a ton of it for years. If you mean drunk drivers killing people, I am sure just as many people would be killed by drivers on cocaine if it were used as much as alcohol is.

Alcohol "kills" in terms of YLL, it reduces life expectancy when consumed in significant amounts, it's similar to tobacco in that.

Ofc there are many people fully intentioned to claim it kills much more than it actually does (or historically wine drinking countries like Italy and France wouldn't be at the top of life expectancy charts in the last 50+ years) so the "science" on it has to be taken extremely carefully but let's say it's easier to agree that significant consumption of super alcoholics decreases your life expectancy on average by a couple of years and makes your last living years on average a little more miserable.

Problem is many people fail to realize alcohol is for a ton of individual a mental health self medication ("a copy mechanism for the struggles of life", if you prefer) and it's absolutely not random that psychotic drugs (the legal ones that the angels with white coats can prescribe to you) are at unprecedented levels of consumption exactly because alcohol consumption is going down a lot but that's a different conversation

That’s because you have never tried cocaine

Feel like all the times I've driven on cocaine I've also been drunk

I haven't tried drunk driving either, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about it. I guess you think you drive better when on cocaine? Some people think they drive better after having a few drinks as well. That's because both impair your judgement (and therefore make you even more stupid).

Man you guess dumb

Cocaine is an upper like adderral or caffiene. It doesn’t make you drive drunk or anything close

Which drug are you on right now? Because I definitely want to ensure that I never, ever take it.

Caffeine. One of my favorite uppers

Well, that's one I have tried. But I don't think it improves anyone's driving unless you're so sleepy you shouldn't be driving anyway.

I don't think driving on coke is going to be too difficult fwiw. It's definitely ridiculous to assume that it should some similar effect to alcohol. (Which really isn't that tough either you just have to be careful)

Yeah if you're not careful.

Being careful doesn’t make it much less dangerous imo

Do you need to learn about opiates and sheathes over pain receptors + tolerance levels?

Highly debatable

No, I really don't, as I don't use any of the things mentioned and don't plan to.

I have observed for my entire life that everyone who drinks a significant amount of alcohol or uses any other unprescribed drugs becomes both more stupid and more selfish. I don't care to become either of those.

If you never noticed that yourself, it's because you were pretty stupid to begin with and really shouldn't risk the loss of even more brain cells.

None of this has more than a tiny tangential connection to the topic of this thread though, and I've had enough of this part of the discussion.

How often do you think about other people besides yourself?

Constantly when not alone, and much of my alone time. That's not directly tied to selfishness though.