> Alcohol does a great deal of harm simply because it’s very common and often severely abused.
The body of someone who uses medical heroin every day with clean needles and doesn't drink alcohol will be in a much better state than someone that drinks two liters of beer every day. Of course I don't think that there is a person with a heroin addiction that doesn't also have an alcohol problem.
I think it makes sense to look at alcohol as more dangerous than heroin from a personal risk perspective.
> At the other end, 1 glass of wine every day for 60 years is as far as we can tell on net harmless.
The evidence seems to be that even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase the risk of certain cancers:
Moderate alcohol use is associated with some cancers, but is also associated with cardiovascular benefits. On net it’s as far as we can tell neutral.
All opioids build tolerance but not resistance. Overdoing is sadly common in very long term users even of medically sourced and therefore clean drugs. Even clean heroin by itself is vastly more deadly than Alcohol for average users over moderate to long timescales.
Which is why you need to compare habitual long term users of drug X to habitual long term users of drug Y.
The body of someone who uses medical heroin every day with clean needles and doesn't drink alcohol will be in a much better state than someone that drinks two liters of beer every day. Of course I don't think that there is a person with a heroin addiction that doesn't also have an alcohol problem.
I think it makes sense to look at alcohol as more dangerous than heroin from a personal risk perspective.
> At the other end, 1 glass of wine every day for 60 years is as far as we can tell on net harmless.
The evidence seems to be that even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase the risk of certain cancers:
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/moderate-drinking.ht...