[Alex3917]

The fact that drug use and misuse kills at least 1 in 4 Americans, if you count legal, illegal, and prescription drugs. Supposedly eating healthy and exercising are the most important things for health, but these are difficult because you need to do them every day. Whereas with drugs, if you just sit down and read 10 books on drugs, or at least 10 books worth of information, then you're pretty much set for life. So I generally think the ROI from investing in teaching people about drugs is probably easily higher than the ROI of any other health-related programs.

Also, they're the only non-profit I know of with an affiliate link generator. And it seems like a waste of an opportunity not to use affiliate links, but at the same time the trust of my readers is obviously worth hundreds of times more than the 12 bucks or whatever I'd earn from redirecting them to myself.

[dsshimel]

Thanks for your response. Your 1 in 4 figure seems plausible, but I'd be curious to see a source (perhaps it's in your mind map? I read that article of yours and immediately downloaded FreeMind; I'm looking forward to trying it out!). I agree that basic knowledge about drugs can go a long way in terms of harms reduction, like knowing why it's bad to take excessive prescription opioids that contain APAP.

[Alex3917]

There are about 443,000 annual deaths from smoking.[1] This is about 1 in 5.

Plus another 35,700 deaths from alcohol and alcohol-related automobile accidents.[2] Plus another 7,600 from NSAIDS.[3] Plus another 27,500 from accidental overdose of prescription opioids or illicit drugs.[4] Plus another 8,400 overdoses ruled suicides or where intent was unknown. Plus another 106,000 from fatal adverse reactions to drugs given in hospitals.[5] That's roughly 26% of the 2.4 million annual U.S. deaths right there. (These numbers are from about ten years ago, so I'm using the death rate from about 10 years ago.)

These numbers don't count: deaths from the longterm consequences of prescription drug use, e.g. someone who takes Accutane and dies of liver failure 20 years later. Nor do they count someone who gets AIDS or hepatitis from drug use, someone who develops a mental illness from stimulant abuse, alcohol-related homicide, etc. Sources:

These numbers also don't include benzodiazepines, for which the excess mortality estimates range from almost zero to over 500,000 per year: http://www.medicaldaily.com/sleeping-pills-linked-premature-...

Sources:

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_...

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/alcoholhighway/2...

[3] http://www.annals.org/content/127/6/429.full.pdf

[4] Leonard J. Paulozzi, Richard H. Weisler, Ashwin A. Patkar. A National Epidemic of Unintentional Prescription Opioid Overdose Deaths. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2011.

[5] Lazarou J, Pomeranz B, Corey P. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients. JAMA. 1998;279:1200-1205.