(Robert Preidt/ HealthDay News) — It’s smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol — and not taking illegal drugs — that pose the greatest risks to people’s health, a new international study contends.
Researchers found that alcohol and tobacco use combined cost more than a quarter of a billion disability-adjusted life-years worldwide, while illegal drugs only accounted for tens of millions in comparison. Disability-adjusted life-years is a measurement of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill health, disability or early death.
Worldwide, more than one in seven adults smoke tobacco, and one in five reports at least one occasion of heavy drinking in the past month, the review of 2015 data found.
Central, Eastern and Western Europe have the highest alcohol consumption per person, and the highest rates of heavy consumption among drinkers (50.5 percent, 48 percent, and just over 42 percent, respectively), according to the report. (…)