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"The immediate answer, of course, is “neither.” But no parent accepts that. It’s assumed, and not incorrectly, that the vast majority of adolescents will try one or the other, especially when they go to college."
The article builds off of this, and while interesting, it strikes me as too resigned that either binge drinking or marijuana use is to be expected. Evidence firmly points that "neither" is the correct answer by a large margin, but then we spend our time looking for the second best solution. This is a cultural problem, and the way forward is not to choose the second worst answer instead of the absolute worst: it's to create an environment where people can choose the best answer.
> This is a cultural problem, and the way forward is not to choose the second worst answer instead of the absolute worst: it's to create an environment where people can choose the best answer.
Instead of denying a basic human urge, we should stop criminalizing it. Properly support those that have developed a dependency and move away from the nanny state. Harm reduction should be the overarching aim.
> Instead of denying a basic human urge, we should stop criminalizing it. Properly support those that have developed a dependency and move away from the nanny state. Harm reduction should be the overarching aim.
While I agree with decriminalization to a reasonable extent, I think you are severely underestimating the crippling effect being dependent on a foreign substance can be on relationships, society, and the individual. Simply changing the legislation is part of a broader comprehensive solution. A cultural change needs to be part of any comprehensive solution to substance use and abuse.
A cultural change is also needed so members of society can enjoy moderate use, without leading to abuse, of substances. Or so they are encouraged to enjoy other parts of life besides substances, if they so choose.
When Portugal decriminalized all drugs of abuse, they saw an initial spike in usage rates for most of them, and then a significant reduction in usage — to well below the original, criminalization-era rates — across the board.
That is to say, a significant part of the cultural shift that's needed appears to be taking away the "Oooh, I'm being so bad!" stigma that criminalization incurs.
> I think you are severely underestimating the crippling effect being dependent on a foreign substance can be on relationships, society, and the individual. Simply changing the legislation is part of a broader comprehensive solution.
I'm advocating for decriminalization and harm reduction. This means a move away from the nanny state and toward a society that deals with substance (ab)use as a normal part of the human condition. Not something that can be wished away!
This means a move away from the nanny state and toward a society that deals with substance (ab)use as a normal part of the human condition.
If we can't go that far, let's at least start dealing with it as a medical issue — which it is — instead of as a criminal one.
Yes, there's crime around drug use/abuse (leaving aside the use itself being criminal where it's illegal and criminalized). In many if not most cases, however, that crime would be mitigated, or even eliminated, if the use, itself, weren't criminal.
So... if I don't have that urge, does that make me non-human?
No. Some people are asexual. This doesn't make them less human.
When was this about pot legalization? I thought I just read an article comparing alcohol to pot; can we have a discussion relating to pot without having to talk about legality for the zillionth time?
GP sounds more like a call for decriminalization and harm reduction than outright legalization.
There is a difference.
EDIT: And in response to your shadow edit: no, we can't. A significant factor in the abuse of drugs — and marijuana in particular, given its relative harmlessness — is their very illegality. The forbidden fruit seems to be far more tempting.
> can we have a discussion relating to pot without having to talk about legality for the zillionth time?
Um no, that is after-all the issue with pot.
Your argument is similar to the argument for teaching only abstinence. Regardless of whether it's truly better to abstain until marriage - it's been shown that teaching abstinence as the only option leads to more high-risk behavior than teaching safe sex. Teenagers will have sex regardless; but with good sex education, they might change their behavior and say, use a condom, or get on the pill.
That has been shown, in our culture. It isn't obvious that it can't work in another cultural environment, which I think is what GP was suggesting we create.
I don't know how feasible it would be to create such a culture. Alcohol use is so normalized it seems almost impossible to change. (Yet, there have been experiments like Prohibition; those didn't go well.)
It seems to me that people often undervalue the short term effects of drugs. Sure they can reduce the length and quality of your life, but in turn they can also draw you closer to the other people in your life and give you wonderful memories. Everything in life is a trade, and it's pointless to overvalue a life less worth living.
Evidence firmly points that "neither" is the correct answer by a large margin
Evidence shows no such thing, at least if we are talking about mortality. When studied, moderate drinkers seem to have better outcomes than those who abstain. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010....
I'm not entirely sure what your argument is. Are you saying we need to create an environment where the choice to consume neither marijuana nor alcohol is accepted? That just seems totally contrary to the human condition. I don't think the problem is the lack of that environment, it's that there's an innate animal desire to alter reality and currently alcohol is leading the pack in mind-altering substances.
Regarding the human condition:
"History shows that people have always used intoxicants. In every age, in every part of the world, people have pursued intoxication with plants, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances. In fact, this behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions much like our drives for food, sleep, and sex. This "fourth drive," says psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel, is a natural part of our biology, creating the irrepressible demand for intoxicating substances."
http://www.amazon.com/Intoxication-Universal-Drive-Mind-Alte...
Pot is usually smoked, so it has an area effect. Alcohol doesn't.
This would be less of an issue if smokers were more concerned with secondhand smoke, and if marijuana users in particular weren't so convinced that their drug of choice was not only harmless, but a force for good in the world. No, I don't want to get high off of you, and getting me high without asking me isn't doing me a favor.
> Evidence firmly points that "neither" is the correct answer by a large margin
Why is this being downvoted? It's inarguable that it's the safest answer, and it fully follows the precautionary principle organic food is philosophically founded on, and organic food seems rather popular around here.
The downvotes to this comment seem like they're coming from people who don't want their substance of choice being questioned, which is a classic behavior of someone with a substance abuse problem.
The continuing downvotes with no replies just prove my point.
Let's file all the, "But pot ruined my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate's life!" stories under this thread, rather than cluttering the discussion with countless top-level threads that all offer variations on the same kind of N=1 anecdata.
I feel discussing weed vs alcohol really tiresome too.
I never had "paranoia" smoking weed and I never started bar fights or stole cars while drunk.
It's a personal thing. If you smoke weed and jump out of windows or smash people faces because you got drunk, you are probably already bent in some way.
These are soft drugs and should be legal simply for drying out the black market. And have them available in a controlled manner.
It's interesting to me how alcohol-centric our(US. But is it any diferent in a developed country?) culture is. I can take a breather with my entire team to a beer bar, brats and beer, but I can't go to some "bar" and take two puffs off of a joint.
Many things in social circumstance seem to depend on booze: >lets get a drink >lets hang out at _x_ house, bring a six pack >lets get drunk and watch __
The same doesn't work for marijuana at least in lots of verbal contexts (being over heard by your superiors.).
Because it's illegal. Once it's legalized in the majority of the country I'm sure that will change.
Let's not. In medicine, N=1 is no joke: the reason being that, when (i) there are so many unknowns, (ii) there is so little experimental data, and (iii) the consequences are so potentially severe, from a decision-theoretical point of view it makes no sense to ignore data at all, no matter how biased. You would be surprised how many of the 'black-box' warnings in common pharmaceuticals come from on N=1 individual reports. Hell, papers are written on individual medical cases...
Now you might even argue that hearsay is not 'data', but in fact it is: for instance, there is quite a bit of NLP literature on trying to identify unreported side effects of medications from 'informal' channels like social media. Even if it's a second or third or fourth report, it is a report nonetheless, and should be taken seriously.
So let's not be gratuitiously negative [1] about people's negative reports about marihuana, no matter how biased you might think they might be. This is one of the most dramatic public health changes since the Prohibition we're talking about, so what is at stake is the health of millions of people for possibly many generations --so even very small effects otherwise considered too rare to matter might have an outsize impact on large segments of society.
Study after study, dataset after dataset, have shown marijuana to be a less dangerous drug than alcohol. It is also a less socially destructive drug. We've also seen that better access to drugs leads to a lowering in overall drug use.
If my kids were to come to me and ask about alcohol vs marijuana, regardless of legality, I would tell them that they should aim to have small amounts of alcohol frequently and small amounts of marijuana very occasionally. If that put them in a situation whereby most of their life was sober, they still had a few drinks at an occasional party and occasionally had a joint or two, I think they'd be in good shape and still get to enjoy some great experiences that pure abstinence would withhold from them.
It's not a good idea to use either drug heavily and frequently, particularly when one's brain is still developing. With that being said, almost everyone I know has drank frequently and often pretty heavily since their teens and I haven't witnessed any of them really suffering for it.
I have, on the other hand, watched many people abuse pot from a young age and now, over a decade later, their life and mental health is a wreck. But perhaps they abused pot because they weren't mentally stable anyway and it just made things worse, but that this was somewhat inevitable?
It's hard to tell, but neither drug used in moderation will do much damage and so, legal or not, it really just remains a case of "all in moderation".
Marijuana is a fat-soluble drug. When you start consuming it, it gets stored inside adipose (fat) cells in your body. When your body needs to burn some of that fat, the drug will get released. So you never really get off of it until months after you stop using it. In contrast, alcohol and its byproducts are quickly metabolized and leave your body in a few hours.
Neither alcohol nor pot is good for developing brains, but alcohol doesn't hang around. Pot does.
Alcohol is certainly a more "dangerous drug" in the sense that it's easier to overdose on it than pot. Of course, if that's our measure, paracetemol (Tylenol) is more dangerous than either. It only takes a small amount of Tylenol to cause liver failure and death. And unlike alcohol, you probably won't throw up on an overdose.
Honestly I get tired of these articles comparing pot and alcohol. They always miss the point. Yes, they're both drugs, but that's about where the similarity ends. Pot is a lifestyle drug because it hangs around in your body. Alcohol is something that you can take or not take on each day as you choose. It would be a lot better to legalize MDMA, or maybe some MDMA analogue that didn't have the neurotoxicity issues. Incoming downvotes from pot advocates in 3, 2, 1...
> Incoming downvotes from pot advocates in 3, 2, 1...
Please don't do that. The guidelines ask you not to do it. It poisons discussion.
Marijuana metabolites don't lurk in adipose tissue, waiting to sneak up on you and fuck up your brain or make you unexpectedly high for "months".
Laboratory drug panels — the kind used in pre-employment drug screens, or to test athletes — with sensitivities as fine as 20ng/mL can typically detect metabolites up to 30 days after cessation, in long-term, daily users with high body fat ratios. Casual, infrequent users will typically piss clean in less than a week.
Alcohol is something that you can take or not take on each day as you choose.
Tell that to a long-term alcoholic. Alcohol is one of the only known drugs for which withdrawal can be fatal.
Fair enough, "months" might be an exaggeration. But "weeks" is still a pretty long time to deal with the drug.
It is certainly not true that "alcohol is one of the only known drugs for which withdrawal can be fatal." In reality, any other GABA receptor agonist would have the same behavior, for the same reasons. There are plenty of them known: barbituates, benzodiazepines, valerian, and a ton of other sedatives they developed in the 70s and have been gradually phasing out ever since.
In fairness, it is certainly true that withdrawal from marijuana is never fatal. But you really have to be using alcohol in enormous amounts pretty much constantly to ever be at risk of delirium tremens. The eqivalent behavior for marijuana would expose you to the same level of lung cancer risk as a two-pack-a-day smoker, and for the same reasons.
In 5 years pot will probably be legal. It is in 23 states now http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc... Personally I think Obama will legalize just before he leaves office, we will have to see.
I would tell my kids "neither" and suggest pot over alcohol if pushed. Alcohol has caused several deaths of people in my life, and I can't say the same about weed. A few kids in my high school got killed in car accidents fueled by alcohol, and this has left an impact on me ever since.
Nobody you know has died of lung cancer?
Pot can be consumed without smoking it.
How about neither? Why does anyone need to pick?
Pot is usually smoked, so it has an area effect. Alcohol doesn't.
This would be less of an issue if smokers were more concerned with secondhand smoke, and if marijuana users in particular weren't so convinced that their drug of choice was not only harmless, but a force for good in the world. No, I don't want to get high off of you, and getting me high without asking me isn't doing me a favor.
Why choose between them when you can have both?
Pot is not just a matter of whether it's less harmful versus alcohol or not. If you are hanging with people who smoke pot, you become a passive smoker as well - this kind of issue does not happen with alcohol at the least. That's the same problem I have with smoking in general - I'm fine with people smoking on their own, but I loathe the attitude of rude smokers who think they can smoke anywhere, at any time, without considering their impact on others (including the disgusting smell that impregnates your clothes).
Not everyone who does it, smokes it, you have a problem with the method of ingestion, not the drug.
But that doesn't fix the problem that pot usually entails smoking, and smokers are notoriously unaware of secondhand smoke.
Sounds to me like Alcohol has more potential to be abused and cause damage in the short term (bad decision making, drunk driving, risk of addiction), while Marijuana has has less high risk outcomes but more long-term negative effects when used casually (likely to lead to a less productive and successful life). Basically: pot makes you moderately dumber for the rest of your life, booze increases the small risks of catastrophic outcomes for short periods of time.
I've tried pretty much everything; and then decided that Marijuana is something I don't want to - haven't had any in 5+ years. I drink Alcohol regularly, but seldom getting more than tipsy. I know my limits, and even if I do get drunk, I'm smart enough to not put myself in bad situations: I don't drive & drink, I know when to stop, and pay attention to my surroundings. I prefer that to the idea of losing 20% of my intelligence.
> I know my limits, and even if I do get drunk, I'm smart enough to not put myself in bad situations: I don't drive & drink, I know when to stop, and pay attention to my surroundings.
There's no way to really know, but I think that in an alternate universe where pot is legal and alcohol is not it would be a net positive for society. Alcohol makes many people aggressive and drastically lowers inhibitions. In my experience pot makes people mellow and keen for some Donkey Kong and pizza!
Alcohol makes many people aggressive and drastically lowers inhibitions. In my experience pot makes people mellow and keen for some Donkey Kong and pizza!
This is too narrow a viewpoint. Alcohol makes me mellow, friendly, hungry, and more into games. I know people for which pot makes them aggressive (I think as a result of paranoia).
> I know people for which pot makes them aggressive (I think as a result of paranoia).
Are these people only using pot, or are they mixing with alcohol or other drugs? This is all anecdotal of course, but I've personally never seen 2 people high from pot act aggressively or want to fight etc.
Basically: pot makes you moderately dumber for the rest
of your life,
...
I prefer that to the idea of losing 20% of my
intelligence.
The New York Times article links to scientific studies on the long-term effects of marijuana use, measuring factors like memory loss. ("Lose 20% of my intelligence" is not supported by any of those studies, though.)
Neither of those claims are supported by any study or evidence; they don't even pertain to memory loss. They're totally subjective but it gets tossed around like fact, that's why I'm wondering.
IIRC, some dispensaries in the Bay Area report that more than 40% of their customers are tech workers. That said, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a population that does more to increase the general productivity of the human race than tech workers.
Anecdotally, many many engineers I know smoke weed. Some are productive while high some are not. Most of those who I know that acknowledge that they are not productive while high, will often decline opportunities to get high because they want to code later and be productive.