In Reply to: Methanol laced alcohol deaths...... posted by dadvet on Tuesday, 2. June 2009 at 04:44 Bali Time:
I was aware of an incident in India where 80 people from the one village died as a result of drinking adulterated alcohol. It is a real killer thoughout the third world. As a society, we tend to focus more on the risks of illegal drugs than we do on the risks of those products that we buy and consume legally. This is in part because of the hypocrisy (the drugs "we" use MUST be okay but the drugs "they" use must be harmful) but also because we assume, wrongly, that the difference between legal and illegal is determined by the risk to health and wellbeing. Unfortunately, more people die from alcohol (and not just adulterated alcohol) and tobacco each fortnight than are killed by all the illegal drugs combined in a year. And that's not to condone the use of illegal drugs, they are certainly dangerous substances but, in many cases, they're not as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. That makes me want to have a drink and smoke just thinking about it :-) Regards, Luke.