A sheer cliff with a 1,000-foot drop-off can cause harm from a fall.
A banana peel can also cause harm from a fall.
However, the risk of suffering severe harm from the two is dramatically different. This is the difference between potential harm and potential risk.
I’m wondering if the Director of the Oregon Health Authority got fired because she or her staff didn’t know the difference. Or maybe she got fired because she and her staff do know the difference, yet chose to obfuscate that difference to try to convince Oregonians that there is no difference between a glass of wine with dinner, smoking a pack of cigarettes, and inhaling asbestos.
This is the Instagram post that Rethink the Drink Oregon posted to its feed on June 25th. On June 26th, a coalition of alcohol-related Oregon trade associations sent a letter to the Director of the Oregon Health Authority, Dr. Sejal Hathi, incensed that this Instagram post equated alcohol with smoking and asbestos and failed to note that while all three can cause harm, they don’t all pose nearly the same risk.
On July 2, Director Hathi responded to the letter in perhaps the most obtuse fashion possible:
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