Alcohol and heroin are not even close in terms of danger and having had a friend who I lost to heroin it sounds odd that someone makes that comparison.
Sorry to hear that. But I actually see this comparison a lot in the literature.
Both heroin and alcohol are dangerous, but as alcohol is socially acceptable and widely available in a different forms, the perception of the danger differs. It's not a question for which drug we lose more people per year (alcohol is by far the clear winner here). It's a perception of these losses are different, and makes us believe that other drugs are more dangerous.
Alcohol is only worse than heroin on an absolute scale. A lot of people drink. A small minority damage their lives and the lives of others through poor decision making (e.g. drunk driving) or addiction. The size of this minority is larger than the entire population of heroin users. If as many people did heroin as drink alcohol, the damage to society would be catastrophic.
Is the literature comparing alcohol and heroine with actual data? Along what metric(s) is alcohol worse than heroine?
If this is actually true, the real takeway is that heroine is not nearly as bad as we've been led to believe and we should all go experiment this weekend.
There are some drug harm rankings, yes, but I haven't studied it so can't say what's the actual consensus of the field experts. I think I just saw this "alcohol is more harmful from alcohol" a few times in the articles.
Both heroin and alcohol are dangerous, but as alcohol is socially acceptable and widely available in a different forms, the perception of the danger differs. It's not a question for which drug we lose more people per year (alcohol is by far the clear winner here). It's a perception of these losses are different, and makes us believe that other drugs are more dangerous.