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Turns out, 'magic' mushrooms are responsible for the lowest percentage of emergency ward visits, followed by cannabis in second place, and LSD and cocaine in joint third place.
At the other end of the chart, methamphetamine, synthetic cannabis, and alcohol carried the most risk of a trip to the local emergency ward, leaving MDMA (ecstasy) and amphetamines in the middle of the drug safety table.
The survey took in responses from 115,523 people across more than 50 countries. Nearly 10,000 participants said they had tried magic mushrooms in the past year, with 0.2 percent of those needing a trip to the hospital after their drug-induced trip.
That was the lowest percentage figure in the survey by some distance, but researchers are keen to point out that no drug use is entirely harmless - and there are plenty of other risks associated with drugs that don't necessarily land you in hospital.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)
I don't know where you're getting your statistics, but they seem way off. The total is well over 60,000, according to the CDC [nytimes.com]. And that is ONLY for overdoses. MANY deaths are also caused by adverse drug reactions and allergies, combinations of prescriptions that cause adverse reactions, misprescribed drugs, and drugs filled wrong by pharmacies.
I can't find any more recent by-drug-type statistics (they should be there somewhere on the CDC site, but I can't find the type codes data), but as of 2008, the analysis found that the most commonly abused prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma caused more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. I don't think heroin use has expanded enough to flip that around, but I could be wrong. I would be very surprised to learn that more people are killed by heroin than Fentanyl.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:15PM
Your article is about all overdose deaths including illegal ones.