{"id":33,"date":"2009-05-31T20:33:49","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T01:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-05-15T21:16:12","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T02:16:12","slug":"drug-war-myth-726001-cocaine-is-deadlier-than-aspirin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/31\/drug-war-myth-726001-cocaine-is-deadlier-than-aspirin\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug War Myth #726,001: Cocaine Is Deadlier Than Aspirin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Our government and the mainstream media implicitly and explicitly justify the war on drugs by perpetuating the myth that drugs are extremely deadly. Illegal drugs do kill (just like ladders, cars, and swimming pools kill) but (1) most of the fatalities stem from the criminalization that forces drugs into the black market (see heroin example at this post<\/a>), and (2) even this risk is greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

For example, the deadliness of cocaine and Aspirin are in fact comparable. A survey of intranasal cocaine administrations during surgery (in amounts comparable to recreational use) found it to be fatal .005% of the time. A study found that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, e.g. Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Aleve, will be fatal to .08% of patients taking them for at least two months.<\/p>\n

Critics will point out that these are two different metrics that do not provide proper comparison (two months of usage vs. one administration). My response is that (1) these are the only metrics available and (2) my point is not to establish one is safer than the other but to show that – contrary to popular perception – their deadliness is similar.<\/p>\n

To see how cocaine fatality statistics are inflated go to “Billy Mays\u2019 Corpse Gets Trampled by Cocaine Hype.”<\/a> <\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

1. Robert Arthur, You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos<\/em> (2008), p. 333.
\n2. Martin Tramer, et al., “Quantitative Estimation of Rare Adverse Events Which Follow A Biological Progression: A New Model Applied to Chronic NSAID Use,” Pain<\/em>, 2000, 85:169-182.
\n3. Linda Wong & Bruce Alexander, “‘Cocaine-Related’ Deaths,” Journal of Drug Issues<\/em>, Winter 1991.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our government and the mainstream media implicitly and explicitly justify the war on drugs by perpetuating the myth that drugs are extremely deadly. Illegal drugs do kill (just like ladders, cars, and swimming pools kill) but (1) most of the fatalities stem from the criminalization that forces drugs into the black market (see heroin example […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,82,20],"tags":[107,104,349,563,403,383,105,109,106,404,108,392,384],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cocaine","category-drugs","category-media-bias","tag-aleve","tag-aspirin","tag-cartoon","tag-cocaine","tag-comic","tag-danger","tag-deadliness","tag-deaths","tag-ibuprofen","tag-illustration","tag-nsaid","tag-overdose","tag-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}