Most Dangerous Drug: Death by drug overdose has been on the rise in the US. With a two twofold increase from 2002 to 2015. But what is the most dangerous drug in the world? If we’re simply talking about the most lethal substances, scientists use something called the median lethal dose, or LD 50, which measures how much of a substance is required to kill half the members of a tested population. So something like coffee requires around 13 grams to kill a 70-kilogram person, while the venom of an inland taipan snake requires much less, with 0.0075 grams.
Using this method, the most deadly substance on Earth, botulinum toxin or botox oral ingestion, would require only 0.000007 grams to kill a 70 kg person. However, most dangerous doesn’t always mean most lethal. In the UK a group of experts decided to look at how much harm the most common recreational drugs cause, using 16 parameters, including types of physical, psychological, and social harm. For example, a drug may cause physical damage but not be lethal.
Most Dangerous Drug – Heroin
It could cause you to become completely dependent. It can be more likely to cause loss of relationships or decreased mental functioning. And these are all forms of harm. Using these criteria, they concluded that the most dangerous drug to an individual is heroin. Heroin can be injected, snorted, or smoked and enters the brain rapidly, particularly when injected into the bloodstream.
Here it attaches to opioid receptors, creating a surge of pleasurable sensations. It’s also highly addictive, with intense withdrawal symptoms that begin within hours of a hit, including insomnia, cold flashes, muscle and bone pain, nausea, and vomiting. Receptors in the brain stem also affected, impacting important physiological processes such as breathing and blood pressure. This is why overdosing causes breathing to slow or stop entirely, leading to the accumulation of CO2 in the blood and ultimately death.
And since heroin is unregulated, it is especially difficult for users to know the strength of the dose, making the risk of dyeing high. Additionally, the drug can mixed with other compounds like fentanyl, making it even more dangerous.
Most Dangerous Drug – Fentanyl
Fentanyl, like heroin, is an opiate, but is 50 to 100 times as strong because it is very lipophilic, meaning it penetrates our fatty brain more easily. And in terms of lethality alone, it’s much more dangerous than heroin. To users, it initially used as a prescription pain reliever, but because of its addictiveness, it mostly used at the end of life cases.
It has since emerged as a recreational drug, where the number of reported fentanyl-related overdoses has increased seven times from 2012 to 2014 in the US. And continues to see more widespread use worldwide.
Most Dangerous Drug – Alcohol Most Dangerous Drug in The World
But there is an even more dangerous drug, though crack cocaine and methamphetamine topped the list of harm to an individual just after heroin. Finding the most dangerous drug overall involved studying 20 different popular drugs and also looking at the harm they place on others.
This includes physical and psychological harm, crime, degradation to families and communities, and economic costs. And in the end, it turns out the most dangerous drug in the world is alcohol. To ensure this wasn’t simply a UK phenomenon, a European group attempted the same process, putting more emphasis on individual harm and less on economic harm.
And even with the different weightings, the two groups found largely the same result. A large contributor to the danger of alcohol is its wide use. The majority of the world does drink and drinks a lot. With an average of 17 liters of pure alcohol consumed per person per year, the World Health Organization found that 3.3 million deaths worldwide were caused by dangerous alcohol consumption. Meaning alcohol kills one person every 10 seconds. But experts don’t recommend a Prohibition stance on alcohol.