How we are killing ourselves every year!

Drugs, Tobacco, Alcohol, Guns and Cars - What does is really cost?

Over the last six months or so, I have attended a number of funerals that I would rather have not had to. These are acquaintances, only one really close friend, but talking to grieving members of their families, I was shocked to learn that it wasn't age that killed them. The youngest was someone I had as a trainee years ago, nice kid in his early 30's, the oldest was 75, the same age as me.

Tobacco 1,315 deaths per day.
More than 480,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
278,544 deaths annually among men (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
201,773 deaths annually among women (including deaths from secondhand smoke)

Cigarette smoking causes premature death:
Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm

Alcohol* 385 deaths per day
Excessive alcohol use was responsible for more than 140,000 deaths in the United States each year during 2015–2019, ...
Each year, deaths from excessive drinking:
Shortened the lives of those who died by an average of 26 years, for a total of nearly 3.6 million years of potential life lost.
Usually involved adults aged 35 or older and males.
Were mostly due to health effects from drinking too much over time, such as various types of cancer, liver disease, and heart disease.
Led to premature deaths. Deaths from drinking too much in a short time (from causes such as motor vehicle crashes, poisonings involving substances in addition to alcohol, and suicides) accounted for more than half of the years of potential life lost.
Excessive drinking is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and it is also costly. It cost the nation $249 billion in 2010 (the most recent year of data available).
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html

Narcotics 275 per day
Provisional data from CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicate that there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before.

The new data documents that estimated overdose deaths from opioids increased to 75,673 in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, up from 56,064 the year before. Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine also increased in the 12-month period ending in April 2021. Cocaine deaths also increased, as did deaths from natural and semi-synthetic opioids (such as prescription pain medication).
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/20211117.htm
So much for the impact of the Drug War. Stop fighting it and start accepting that we lost it.

Guns and cars.
Firearms - 134 deaths per day.
Firearm deaths include all deaths involving guns, such as homicide, suicide, and accidents. More people in the US die from suicide involving a firearm than homicides or accidents.
In 2021, there were a total of 48,830 firearm deaths, an increase of 3,608 or 8% from 2020.
https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/
This surprised me, I expected to find more deaths than this.
Then I looked at vehicular deaths*, and realize that with fewer than 43,000 deaths in 2021, we're doing marginally better than we are for other causes.
I really thought guns and cars would be killing more of us than anything else.

* Some of these numbers are likely doubled up, especially with alcohol and motor vehicles, but I couldn't say how many. These are all the most recent figures I could track down on a very quick look, but I would think there are other, more recent figures available.*