A new study from the Society for the Study of Addiction has revealed that tobacco and alcohol are the most harmful substances in the world.

The report brought together World Health Organization, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime data. There are some limitations in the data, but the report did give a worldwide picture of mortality along with the burden of diseases associated with tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use.

The use of cannabis is up in the United States and Canada, but the story is really about tobacco and alcohol use. Researchers revealed they had measured cannabis dependence at 259 out of 100,000 people. Some of the more affluent regions in the world had the highest rates.

Tobacco and Alcohol Use Took 250,000,000 Lives in 2015

The study revealed that alcohol and tobacco use had the highest rates of mortality when compared to such as cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The study was released by the Society for Study of Addiction. The researchers said that they had studied the overall harm of drug use by measuring impact in “disability-adjusted life years”. This takes into consideration the years that people are able to live with cancer, heart disease, and respiratory disease and tallies the number of deaths due to overdose.

The substance mortality rates revealed that tobacco killed the majority of people with 110.7 deaths for every 100,000 people. It showed that deaths relating to alcohol were only a third as lethal as drinking was responsible for 33.0 deaths from 100,000 people. The numbers then dropped away sharply, and combined illicit drug use deaths were put at 6.9 deaths out of every 100, 00 people.

One of the most striking figures to come from the study is the "disability-adjusted life years" (DALYs) was that tobacco and alcohol cost humankind 250,000,000 or quarter of a billion years around the globe. The use of illicit drugs costs only a fraction of this.

Tobacco Kills More People than Anything Else

Tobacco came out as the top killer as it cost 170.9 million DALYs, alcohol then followed with 85.0 million years and illicit drugs with 27.8 million years.

The report also painted a clear picture of the distribution of harm around the world that was caused by illicit drug use, tobacco, and alcohol. However, it has to be said that this is where the data sets of the researchers happen to be the most incomplete. The report stated that the highest mortality rates for alcohol and illicit drugs were in Eastern Europe. New Zealand and Australia along with a host of Pacific Island nations showed the highest rates of mortality for tobacco.

Mortality Rates in Europe among Low and Middle Income Was Worse

Europe came out worse in middle and low-income countries. Mortality rates were the biggest in these countries. In absolute terms, the mortality rates were the biggest there, but then these regions are where the data is the sparsest.

In Southwest Asia and North Africa, the use of alcohol was the lowest globally, and this came in at less than a liter per capita. The lowest of the smoking rates occurred in Western sub-Saharan Africa.

This new report does suggest that there is an upward trend in years and the number of lives lost to tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs. It also reveals that nothing much has changed in regards to substances that cause the most harm or where people are using them most. Smoking and the use of alcohol when compared with illicit drugs are well in front, and illicit drug use does not even come close.