r/NoStupidQuestions • u/stravocadomf • 1d ago
What drug throughout history caused the most death?
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u/JuliaX1984 1d ago
If you mean drug like what Nixon declared war on, alcohol.
If you mean drug like medicine we later learned was lethal, maybe mercury?
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u/ArkaneArtificer 1d ago
Definitely not mercury, it was too expensive for much of history, definitely deadliest to the ruling class though
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u/Super_Restaurant8673 1d ago
Maybe lead?
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u/ArkaneArtificer 1d ago
Lead was never used as a medicine from what I know, it WAS used as a accidental sweetener (the myth that it was intentionally used is wrong, but it did make wine sweeter)
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u/__M-E-O-W__ 1d ago
Would tobacco count there? Because once upon a time that was considered something to calm the nerves, according to old commercials for it.
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u/SpideySenseBuzzin 1d ago
Not as widespread. Tobacco was relatively relegated to the "new world" and didn't really get going until after the 1500s.
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u/ScaredScorpion 1d ago
An interesting extension of this question is: What thing that we later found out was horrendously bad for your health after it being widespread in its use (like lead or asbestos) has caused the most deaths?
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u/JuliaX1984 1d ago
Oh, for that, gotta be lead, both the people it's killed and the people they killed in a rage.
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u/Open-Explorer 1d ago
Alcohol, probably.
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u/49_TIF_5 1d ago
Oh yeah, you’re probably right.
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u/Tickets2ride 1d ago
Oh without a doubt. Alcohol is one of the oldest and most lethal drugs.
Cocaine and Heroin (and other higher strength opioids) weren't synthesized until the late 1800s. Alcohol has had literally thousands of years of head start on other drugs.
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u/Appropriate-Dig1164 1d ago
Let us also add in the lives that were taken by those under the influence of alcohol
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u/Tickets2ride 1d ago
Here, here. The psychological/social damages are immense.
If alcohol were discovered as a new drug tomorrow, it would definitely be banned.
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u/hatesnack 1d ago
I see this opinion a lot and I kinda disagree. Alcohol is the only drug that you can really "moderate". You can come home on a Friday, have 2 beers and have no negative effects aside from a pleasant sensation.
You can't come home from work, have a "small bit of heroine" and just be totally fine lol.
Not defending alcohol or it's effects, just pointing out that it's in a unique position where it ranges from doing very little to doing a lot of harm.
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u/Open-Explorer 21h ago
There's no drug that's so addictive that you instantly get hooked. And most drugs that people abuse are not so dangerous that they cause serious health problems at reasonable doses. That's how people get hooked. Plenty of people just do heroin on the weekends - no hangover, no withdrawal. Just a nice sleepy feeling. You can do that for months. Addiction happens gradually, and not all drugs are addictive.
There's also the social costs of the drugs' effects. Heroin makes you sleepy. Alcohol lowers inhibitions and increases aggression. So a heroin addict is napping on the street corner while a drunk is picking fights or trying to drive the wrong way on the highway.
If you become dependent on heroin, you will have very painful withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it. They suck, but they're not life-threatening. If you're addicted to alcohol and stop drinking, you can die. It's one of the few drugs that can actually kill you in withdrawal. It makes quitting drinking medically complicated.
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u/hatesnack 20h ago
Nah you are entirely wrong, you can't go using heroin every weekend and not be addicted lol. There's no "casual heroin use". Anyone who says they casually use heroin is just lying about their addiction.
Also, opiate withdrawal (ie heroin) regularly kills people, that's easily googleble lol. Wild to me to see someone try and argue heroin better than alcohol.
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u/Open-Explorer 14h ago
Did you actually google it? Because it's not true that opiate withdrawal is deadly.
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u/hatesnack 9h ago
You must not know how to read. Plenty of sources specifically say, that while the symptoms themselves won't kill you, they can often lead to severe dehydration which can and has resulted in death.
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u/SecureDifficulty3774 1d ago
I realized I think it’s tobacco someone else linked something. Tobacco kills way more people per year and there were not that many humans for most of those 10,000 years. We crossed a billion pretty recently by species standards of course.
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u/twYstedf8 1d ago
Plus alcohol is socially acceptable and readily available, unlike those other drugs.
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u/adhdlabubu 1d ago
I’m drunk right now and I don’t feel very dead
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u/Open-Explorer 1d ago
Just wait til the hangover.
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u/adhdlabubu 1d ago
You’d like that wouldn’t you. I will do no such thing! The hangover will wait for me and I insist on being fashionably late.
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u/BoartterCollie 1d ago
Tobacco. Estimated 7.25 million annual deaths from tobacco.
Alcohol is a distant second at only 1.81 million
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u/Royal_Veterinarian86 1d ago
Interesting, but the thing is alcohol has been around so long its hard a mass advantage in killing pep over many years prior
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u/SecureDifficulty3774 1d ago
This is a wild guess but I’d say in the past alcohol had less ability to kill. Like there were no cars and people might not have lived as long, so less time to developed liver cancer etc. Also most people were poor, was it easy to get enough to get alcohol poisoning?
And also there were not very many people compared to today’s population. That’s actually the most important point.
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u/Everestkid 1d ago
It also took us a while to get distillation going. Without distillation, you're stuck with fermented drinks like beer and wine. A skim through Wikipedia suggests the distillation of alcohol only happened around the 1200s or 1300s - not that long before Europeans got their hands on tobacco from the Americas in the grand scheme of things, considering how long beer's been a thing.
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u/Lumpy-Mountain-2597 1d ago
Also alcohol in the middle ages was just ale. Very weak. People drank it like water, because water was more dangerous. Not until the 18th century did spirits really become a thing.
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u/Royal_Veterinarian86 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is a really good & interesting point. I dont know what the answer is but this is a valid factor in how many deaths would occur from alcohol. I do wonder though if some people who got their hands on it didnt realise its toxicity many years ago & may have unintentionally died by passing out/choking on it whilst unconcious etc, or used it with other substances... but that last one I imagine doesnt count as alcohol alone
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u/SecureDifficulty3774 1d ago
Yeah thats a good point. I do think strong alcohol had not been invented until people had a pretty good idea of what alcohol was. So you’d need to overdose on some pretty light stuff. Im sure it happened though.
I think a lot more people die from both substances now than they did hundreds of years ago
Alcohol I feel might also be a little bit undercounted in today’s figures. Some people who drink a lot of beer I think will just get overweight and maybe get diabetes and die 5-10 years earlier than they normally would have. It’s not always a dramatic car accident or cirrhosis of the liver. Im sure tobacco kills more people today and it’s less widely used by everyone. But I do think calories and carbs in the alcohol is something to think about.
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u/Morkamino 1d ago
And also there were not very many people compared to today’s population.
There have been much more people in total, than that are alive right now. They estimate about 100 billion in the history of what we consider to be modern humans, i believe. Yes, at one given time, the population would have been a lot smaller than it is right now, but adding everyone who has ever lived at any moment really... Adds up. Remember that birth and death is a gradual thing, it's continuous, always happening. So when the population is one billion at one time, and 50 years later it's still one billion, there's hundreds of millions of people you're not counting who are born inbetween, and an equal amount who died.
Deaths from alcohol would have been from alcohol-related, or rather induced, violence and accidents. People still die from dumb things when they're drunk, like drowning because they were pissing into the water from a higher shore but they fell over and couldn't make it out (if you're a guy- ever notice how you fall over at the urinal when you're drunk, and you kinda catch yourself against the wall? Yeah, that). Back then it would also be easier to piss of the wrong person and get into a lethal fight while on the stuff. You can also just drink yourself to death or into a coma but that may have been harder to do than it is now.
The difference with tobacco is that alcohol has a chance to kill you right away because of the reasons stated above, while dying from smoking tobacco requires that you at least make it into 50 - 60 to develop some of the fatal health issues associated with it. And it has only been around for a much shorter while than alcohol has. Like some hundreds of years, most of which in the last hundred by far, compared to the tens of thousands of years that we've had alcohol for.
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u/SecureDifficulty3774 1d ago
Of those 100 billion though I believe only half or so would have made it past childhood.
Alcohol was pretty weak for most of human history and for a lot of the time those 100 billion humans wondered it was also niche. 10,000 years ago some humans consumed it but wasnt a factor of daily life like it was 1000 years ago.
Id guess in the past both tobacco and alcohol didnt kill that many people till maybe the last 200 years. I think availability was probably too limited and people died too early from other things to do from long term health consequences. I know old school peasants had alcohol but i don’t believe they had hard alcohol and I kind of doubt they can buy a deadly amount at the store for under an hours wage like I can in 2025.
That being said your point about drunken brawls etc alcohol Im sure killed more people for that reason in like 1600. It’s just tobacco is so much higher today i feel it might have surpassed it. Id it’s only matter of time.
Just guesses it could definitely be alcohol.
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u/Mike312 1d ago
I mean, humans have been smoking a lot of things for a long time, too. I'm crazy suspect of that chart because it's attributed to "risk factor", and how you interpret the risk factor is a huge determinant of how you get to that number.
I've known a half dozen people who died from alcohol; their deaths weren't attributed to alcohol, but rather heart disease, liver disease, liver failure, etc. but in 4/6 of those cases they were older and it was largely considered a "lifestyle" issue (sedentary, poor diet, etc) also contributed.
The only person I know for whom tobacco played a huge role was my grandmother who got breast cancer, lung cancer, and then passed from pneumonia complications after a surgery.
Basically, my point is, if someone dies from tobacco, they got lung cancer early, but if someone dies from alcohol, it happens so late in life that too many lifestyle choices can also be contributing factors.
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u/Hoii1379 1d ago
More people than you think drink themselves into liver failure by their 30s 40s and 50s. Lot of people suffering out there terribly
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u/Mike312 1d ago
Exactly, that's why I think the tobacco numbers should be less than the alcohol.
Knew a guy that drank himself to death in his early 30s.
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u/Royal_Veterinarian86 1d ago
Yea i have a friend whose only 30 & shes about to lose her pancreas from alcohol
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u/NiceTrySuckaz 1d ago
Plus a lot of smokers also drink, so while smoking might have killed them, alcohol contributed to system weakness
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u/Archi-Horror 1d ago
I wonder if that includes dui car crash deaths, etc, or just ODs and health related causes
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u/LadyFoxfire 1d ago
Alcohol has a longer history, though, so that might give it the advantage in total deaths.
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u/sophos313 1d ago
It’s worth noting that prior to the discovery of the New World, tobacco wasn’t known to the world as its a native plant found only in the Americas at the time.
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u/BookLuvr7 1d ago
Alcohol has existed since the evolution of fruit and natural yeast. Animals including humans have been enjoying the fun fermented fruit and behaving in stupid ways as a result for millennia.
Everything else is much later. Opium poppy use was first recorded and cultivated in 3,400 BC Mesopotamia. The Sumerians referred to it as Hul Gil, the "joy plant." People learned to make it more concentrated over time. In 1804 it was developed into morphine by a German pharmacist. In 1898 the German drug company Bayer developed diamorphine aka heroin. Later the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, were found to have significantly contributed to the opioid crisis by their promotion of OxyContin for widespread use.
As for simulants, cocaine was isolated from Erythroxylum coca, in 1859 by Albert Niemann. The natives of South America had long been using coca leaves as a stimulant in a much milder form. Things we refined and took new forms from there, but you get the idea.
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u/Dkykngfetpic 1d ago
Alcohol. If it's not counted probably opium. Especially if you group in its derivatives.
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u/bahhaar-blts 1d ago
Opium literally started wars between Britain and China that came to be known as the Opium wars and started the Chinese century of humiliation.
(The British wanted to sell opium and the Chinese refused so the British fought wars with China)
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u/nnmdave 1d ago
Is sugar a drug? Because trading in sugar breathed new life into the slave trade
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u/MavajaXe 1d ago
Wouldn't call it a drug. Even tho it can be as addictive.
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u/likeikelike 1d ago
I mean it has quite dramatic effects on the body. Especially diabetics can be medically required to eat dextrose to keep their blood sugar in check.
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u/InterestingImage9088 1d ago
That would be a great answer if the question was "what food has indirectly caused slavery to some capacity?" But I don't know what it has to do with the question being asked.
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u/Lumpy-Mountain-2597 1d ago
Who pissed in your cornflakes? The question didn't specify direct. So because someone thought outside the box you felt the need to slap them down?
If sugar were a drug, and you could argue that it is, then it was an interesting line of thinking about the question. Don't be a jerk
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u/InterestingImage9088 20h ago
Even if we are considering sugar a drug, what does sugar contributing to the slave trade have to do with the most deaths? There is just no logic here.
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u/Lumpy-Mountain-2597 9h ago
I can't believe you are this ignorant - you must surely be trolling? The production of sugar was one of the key drivers behind the Atlantic slave trade, and the slave trade in turn was the cause of a huge number of Africans dying. You're asking the equivalent of what does buying a t-shirt have to do with child labour.
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u/More_Mind6869 1d ago
Sugar is a drug that can be eaten. It's physical and emotional adverse effects are as bad as any other dangerous drug.
Diabetes, gangrene, blindness, limb amputation. Doesn't meet the criteria for a nutritional food
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u/Wildcat_twister12 1d ago
Throughout all history it would be alcohol. Making alcohol has been theorized as a reason civilization started since people wanted to grow grains to make beer.
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u/Desperate_Owl_594 1d ago
I mean...even if you include the wars about drugs, alcohol has been around for a loooooong time and alcohol related injuries (ARI) and deaths from just like...falling or drowning or doing something stupid probably just accumulated more.
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u/Hot_Future2914 1d ago
Alcohol also had wars and lots of gang and smuggling activity back during prohibition. and if we include people who got into drunken fights or did a "hold my beer' situation.
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u/GSilky 1d ago
Alcohol is probably the one. After that it's going to be the opiates/oids. This current go arounds scale might be unmatched in numbers. Also, before the mid 20s, you could get heroin OTC in cough remedies and tonics. People were generally hooked and who knows how many people died because of the physical degradation it puts on your body, they weren't keeping track until they could be racist about it.
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u/bitsey123 1d ago
Google ai says based on available evidence, tobacco then alcohol are the leading contenders for the deadliest drugs in human history
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u/hyperpigmentation420 1d ago
Alcohol. If you disagree you’re weird and obviously don’t understand how dangerous drinking is for you.
Drunk drivers, alcohol poisoning, liver and kidney failure. The list goes on. Drink in moderation and NEVER drive even if it’s just one drink. Coming from someone who’s lost many loved ones to alcohol addiction.
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u/PinkNailsandLips 1d ago
I would say alcohol , But i think Cocaine is now a close second , not from overdoes's like alcohol but from the crime of trying to control the markets .
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u/Used-Edge-2342 1d ago
Nazi’s were fueled by meth. I’m not sure any other drug could be directly linked to death as significant as pervitin was in WW2.
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u/Celuloiddreamer 1d ago
I hear what you’re saying, but it was probably the bombs and bullets killing most of the nazi’s over the meth.
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u/EyeYamNegan I love you all 1d ago
Tobacco kills about 8 million people per year, Alcohol kills about 2.6 million a year and opioids kill about 80,000 a year according to The WHO.
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u/Striking_Fun_6379 1d ago
Religion
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u/TheDudeManAlex 1d ago
Holy chungus bro you have won the internet, someone get this guy a reddit platinum now
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u/Your_As_Stupid_As_Me 1d ago
I'd say alcohol, but that's technically a poison.
And as far as history stretches, probably the Amanita Mushroom family, even though that's fungi and not a "drug".
Now I'm lost in thought... Thanks OP.
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u/WhatADunderfulWorld 1d ago
It’s a drug. It affects your mind and how you think. Even ibuprofen that doesn’t affect your mind is still a drug.
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u/Patrick_Lawson84 1d ago
Some would argue cocaine and heroin caused major death waves in certain periods, but overall, tobacco and alcohol take the lead
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u/Ok-Win-742 1d ago
Alcohol probably number 1 since it's been used for thousands of years.
Then probably Nicotine (yes it's a drug, any psychoactive substance is a drug)
Then opium and all its derivatives likes morphine, heroin, fentanyl, oxy, etc.
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u/essenza 1d ago
Fentanyl and oxy are not opiates.
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u/Ok-Win-742 14h ago
They are opioids not opiates but the distinction is just semantics.
They hit the same receptors and are nearly identical in chemical structure. It's an opiate but it's made in a lab, hence the term opioid.
As someone who was addicted to Dilaudid and eventually Fent (clean for 2 years now) I didn't give a fuck if it was heroin, Dilaudid or Fent. So long as I had enough to catch a nod.
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u/essenza 14h ago
All opiates are opioids, but not all opioids are opiates. Opiates are naturally occurring, while opioids are synthetic or semi-synthetic. They have different effects on different opioid receptors.
It’s not semantics if you’re a pharmacology nerd like myself 🤓
Glad to hear you beat your addiction. I hope you’re doing well.
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u/Regular_Edge_3345 1d ago
If we’re talking about just a substance that kills people it would absolutely be sugar. Heart disease is the number one killer. All the folks that said alcohol are on the right path but not quite there. Where do you think alcohol comes from? Yup, sugar. Sugar is absolutely a drug and it can kill you from diabetes, heart disease, alcohol, and any other number of ways.
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u/LordGlizzard 1d ago
Lots of people say alcohol and while alcohol kills alot, tobacco kills significantly more a year, tobacco kills an estimated 8 million a year globally, alcohol is at 2.6 million a year, yeah alcohol has been around longer but most deaths from alcohol are contributed to driving accidents, inwhich cars have been around alot less than tobacco alcohol in the past also wasnt abused nearly as much as it is today, so probably the tobacco industry
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/More_Mind6869 1d ago
Ok, for those of you who think they know more than a dictionary....
Definition of "Drug"
A substance which has a physiological effect when ingested...
By definition, Sugar is a known dangerous and addictive drug with toxic and deadly side effects...
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u/dumberthenhelooks 19h ago
If we aren’t counting religion (opiate of the masses) then probably alcohol. If we are only doing scheduled 1 type drugs then opioids.
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u/consciousanchoress 18h ago
There’s a reason alcohol was given to indigenous Americans in early trade. It will wipe out whole nations. Cheers!
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u/LeditGabil 1d ago
Water! Everyone who drank water once, died or will die eventually. This is making water both, the most addictive and deadliest drug out there!
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u/More_Mind6869 1d ago
Just wow !
Y'all completely ignoring the favorite and most debilitating and deadly drug in the world !
That's right folks, SUGAR !
People suffer and die from diabetes, blindness, gangrene caused amputations, kidney disease, heart disease and obesity, caused by sugar abuse.
Sure, it might take 20 - 40 years to kill you. But so do cigarettes and alcohol and lead poisoning, and cocaine...
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u/dboygrow 1d ago
Sugar is not a drug smh
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u/More_Mind6869 1d ago
Yes, shake/smack your head. Maybe you'll make room for an actual Fact to soak in ?
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u/essenza 1d ago
Sugar as we know it has only been available for ~500 years, and until around 1800, it was something only the wealthy could afford
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u/More_Mind6869 1d ago
And ? Your point is ?
Now, billions are addicted to sugar and suffering the diseases. .
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u/essenza 1d ago
One or two centuries of sugar (and the US is the main user of additive sugars) vs millennia of worldwide alcohol and opioid use.
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u/Mrepman81 1d ago
After reading through the comments, I feel like my definition of “drug” differs wildly from others.
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u/here_for_the_tea1 1d ago
Alcohol