In 1970 and 1971, in New York City, more adolescents died of heroin-related incidents than any other cause. Watch what you wish for. Hard drugs are not pot or alcohol; anyone who has used all of them at least a few times will tell you that. As someone who had heroin addicts in the family, and as someone who did a lot of alcohol, pot, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamine, etc., in his 20s, I'm strongly against legalizing hard drugs. You need to experience it firsthand to understand what it's like.
In point of fact, alcohol causes more deaths per year than all other drugs combined:
CDC [0]: Alcohol causes over 140,000 deaths per year according to data between 2015 and 2019
CDC [1]: All other drugs caused 100,000 deaths in the twelve month ending in April 2021
There's a lot of arguments to be made as to why (different legal status, different cultural norms around use, etc.) but the fact is that, currently, alcohol use is more lethal than all other drug use combined.
The number of people dying from jumping off the empire state building is orders of magnitude less than the ones you quoted... that doesn't mean you have good odds of surviving the jump or that it's a good idea to build a jumping ramp.
Thank you to share this personal story. What are your thoughts on trying to reduce harm? You sound like someone who will have valuable opinions about this important matter.
