VERDICT: THE GLASS BEATS THE CIGARETTE! The Crowd Crowns Alcohol the Bigger Health Villain and Sends Smoking Out to the Porch

Put the kettle on, dears, because the verdict is in, and it's not the one my generation was raised on. Asked which does more harm to your health, a glass or a cigarette, you young people on the opinion markets have pointed at the glass. Drinking has come out ahead of smoking. In my day the ashtray was the villain and the drinks trolley was furniture. Times change.

This fight didn't come out of nowhere. My colleague Ranger Fern was there when it started, and in The Glass Stalks the Cigarette he watched alcohol slip in front early. What's new is that the lead held. Here's the background. According to the World Health Organization, around two and a half million deaths around the world in 2019 were put down to drinking, and the WHO's alcohol fact sheet links it to more than two hundred diseases and conditions. It also says there's no amount of drinking that is risk-free. That last bit rather spoils the 'one glass of red for the heart' story my sister has been telling since 1987.

Now for the numbers, which come from opinion markets on Morfi, where people put real money behind what they believe. Alcohol (drinking) holds 63% consensus. Smoking (cigarettes) is behind on 37%. A total of 14 traders have put $3,467,370 into the question, and all of it happened in less than a day. That's faster than my bread rises.

Mind you, the experts don't measure harm with the same spoon. Some count total deaths, some count cancer risk, some count years of life lost, and the answer changes depending on which one you use. So the crowd isn't settling a science exam here. It's deciding which habit it's more worried about. And the most sobering fact in the whole pile is about the two of them together. WHO Europe reports that people who both drink and smoke have a five-fold higher risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box and gullet than people who do only one. That's the pub-garden pairing of a pint and a smoke, and it's worse than either on its own.

This part is just my opinion, so take it with a pinch of salt (and not too much salt, either). I think the crowd got it right, though maybe not for the reason it thinks. Smoking lost its manners years ago. We banished it to the porch, put warnings on the packet and made it feel ashamed. Drinking still gets invited to every wedding, christening and Friday night. A villain everyone recognises does less damage than one sitting at the head of the table being toasted. The crowd isn't really saying cigarettes are fine. I think it's saying we've been far too polite to the bottle.

What to watch next: whether smoking can claw back some backing once the old 'cigarettes are the obvious answer' crowd wakes up, or whether drinking's lead hardens like gravy left on the stove. If you've got an opinion, and everyone at my dinner table certainly has, you can join the market on Morfi and put your money where your mouth is. Just make it a cup of tea in your hand while you do.