Not much point in reading an article arguing for weed prohibition when it doesn't have a single word about alcohol vs. cannabis, which is of course the real issue.
I think that the case for cannabis legalization and drug law reform can be made without any necessity to resort to whataboutist arguments. Opponents prefer arguing on the merits of comparisons between pot and alcohol to arguing in favor of the Drug War on its merits- which, upon examination, are practically nonexistent.
They are both psychoactive drugs but alcohol has FAR more of a link to VIOLENCE than cannabis does, and excessive alcohol use is FAR more damaging to physical health than excessive cannabis use. How dare people use the more dangerous drug and ORDER their FELLOW CITIZENS not to use an indisputably safer one! And to make it worse, the people giving the orders are the same folks who go on and on and on and on forever about freedom. The only freedom they care about it their goddamn own! Stinking hypocrites without a leg to stand on!
came here to say тАЬIтАЩm an alcoholicтАж thatтАЩs it, thatтАЩs all I wanted to say.тАЭ that attitude is also reflected in the super brief line about how тАЬmost peopleтАЭ are not suggesting broader legalization policies for drugs like cocaine. sirтАжa drug is a drug is a drug is a drug, their physiological effects and addiction rates and addiction outcomes differ, but just because one addictive drug was the choice of the British empire (or more than one- alcohol, caffeine, nicotine) it doesnтАЩt mean other drugs are inherently different in ANY way whatsoever with regard to smart public policy for addictive drugs that maintains a focus on public health and bodily autonomy. I am sympathetic to the idea that marijuana legalization has not been pursued in a nuanced enough way to protect public health and safety, but you lose me completely when your takeaway is тАЬwell you know politically it would be hard to do in a better, positive way so instead of this big dumb policy letтАЩs go back to the other one.тАЭ marijuana arrests keep people out of work and struggling, and while state prison time might only be slightly more than 1 in 10 (!!!) for drug offenses I think thereтАЩs an argument to be made that peoples lives and finances and health (and their faultless childrenтАЩs) are far more drastically impacted by criminalization than by addiction, which by the way isnтАЩt helped AT ALL by criminalization!!! IтАЩm for highly regulated drug legalization or decrim and I appreciated the link to alternative models, IтАЩve also considered that it might be best executed through medical care (to where your doctor could тАЬprescribeтАЭ a psychedelic or MDMA or a recreational drug in a moderated amount upon request to maintain a usage record for intervention if necessary). consumption limits are not a bad idea. a complete lack of consistency just because thatтАЩs what has been done up to this point IS. because our healthcare system is fucked too, and mental healthcare is treated like a joke, over 50% of US counties donтАЩt even have a licensed psychiatrist - so the idea that continuing to criminalize addiction for some substances while allowing people intoxicated on others to spike crime rates, all because we canтАЩt treat and deal with addiction like the public health crisis it is, is maddening. the idea that people donтАЩt care about quality control also drives me crazy, it goes back to your point, people would still be making bathtub gin if safe alternatives werenтАЩt available, and the economic lens is justтАж тАЬColorado has had legal weed for 10 whole years and 1/3 still buy illicitтАЭ oh shit you mean in one decade the entire nature of buying & selling drugs hasnтАЩt shifted after a century of reliance on illicit networks?? IтАЩm shocked!!! itтАЩs just so goddamn frustrating, I agree with the тАЬmore persuasive argumentsтАЭ that people should be able to do what they want with their bodies and drugs are fun, but I also know with my brain that drugs are addictive and statistically everything that we criminalize from a puritanical mindset becomes completely corrupted and dangerous for people in the absence of regulation. internet porn is addictive, and it can be degrading, and there is exploitation, but the second it becomes criminalized it will be an all out free for all for the people in that world, for consumers, and effecting everyone outside the prison industrial complex negatively. itтАЩs so easy to sit in one life thatтАЩs gone one way and go тАЬno no, thatтАЩs better, thatтАЩs better for all the rest of usтАЭ but the continuing pattern is that itтАЩs not, that plenty of men of status and wealth are completely physically addicted to alcohol or cocaine or another drug of choice, they are not exempt from public health crises, they are not exempt from benefiting from the labor of sex workers, they are not exempt from gay sex or other formerly criminalized behavior that is associated with morality instead of physiology, and itтАЩs unfair and gross to act like some things should remain criminalized just because some people can get around that without huge, life altering consequences. it hurts all of us, it really hurts people in recovery because itтАЩs crowded in secrecyтАж and itтАЩs tiring. rant over ugh I had so much hope for this analysis.
"you lose me completely when your takeaway is 'well you know politically it would be hard to do in a better, positive way so instead of this big dumb policy letтАЩs go back to the other one.'"
Really. The argument already contained some disputable points, but that was where it completely went off the rails.
Myself, I think the marijuana and alcohol are about the same. Soft drugs that aren't good but maybe shouldn't be flat out illegal. Tax and regulate.
It's certainly possible that prohibition might have been a better idea in decades past. It's harder to prohibit things that are already prevalent and have a market, and that has to affect whether you try prohibition. But the cat is out of the bag.
The real problem is that people want to consider pot cool and blame crime on criminalization. It would be better if pot were lower status and everyone admitted that crime had different causes (and possibly that the IQ and inhibition lowering affects of drugs increases crime).
You can think what you like pal but if you were to look at reality you would see that alcohol causes way more problems than weed. I mean just ask a cop. Fights in bars? Check. Fights at pot parties (or "coffee shops" in Holland)? Nope, not really. For the record I like 'em both. So what?
A fight in a bar typically only ruins one evening. Like you, many people like 'em both. Do we really need stoned people driving drunk? Isn't being simply drunk bad enough? I've been that terrified passenger with a stoned drunk at the wheel on more than one occasion. I'm grateful and lucky to be here and to have never witnessed other innocent people dying. The only thing worse than a drunk is a stoned drunk.
So for some reason with someone both stoned & drunk you're okay with drunk. Which is utterly stupid 'cause driving drunk is waaay more dangerous than driving stoned.
But if you routinely ride with drunk drivers you really are quite stupid. I'd rather walk. Actually if someone is gonna drive drunk some pot might be in order since it would probly get them to slow down. Would only work if they were regular pot heads.
If people driving under the influence of cannabis were actually a serious problem worthy of law enforcement concentration, it would have made the headlines decades ago, because millions of people have been doing it regularly for decades. It's only been 'discovered" as a "problem" or "menace" in the aftermath of legalization in some of the states, as if the situation only emerged in the last ten years.
I used to drive a cab in Sacramento, on the night shift for years; I regularly hauled passengers who had driving license suspensions for DUI. I never once had a passenger who had been arrested for driving under the influence of marijuana. I've talked to lawyers and police about "marijuana DUI." I used to solicit those observations. In all my conversations, I heard of one case- and it was someone who was pulled over while smoking behind the wheel.
In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, I attended a couple dozen music concerts in arenas and stadium-sized venues where the majority of the crowd got high before, during, and after the show. I used to stay until the parking lot had cleared out, because if there's one thing a driving professional can't stand, it's being stuck in traffic. In my decades of show-going, I observed a total of one fender-bender in the lot.
If cannabis was as bad as alcohol, the headlines in the aftermath of every one of those shows would have featured multiple collisions and mass carnage on the highways. Or, at minimum, mass arrests for DUI. If cannabis DUI had presented a problem, finding out about it would have required only a glance at the next day's headlines.
My argument is not that cannabis is worse than alcohol. My argument is that alcohol can be consumed as a beverage as opposed to a drug. Many people have one or two drinks and then refuse the second or third drink. Sober, no menace to anyone, on the road nor in a bar. Cannabis is always consumed as a drug. The people who claim that they need cannabis to deal with pain would consume it as a drug anyway. The mostly men living on the streets doing opioids are less likely to have started out as alcoholics than to have started out as pot smokers. Cannabis is too often a gateway drug. Alcohol has wreaked enough havoc on society. Why would anyone want to add YET another drug to the mix? There are not too many great "stoners" in history. There are, however, many great happy drunks in history. Winston Churchill, for one.
As a teenager in the 1970s, I occasionally drove A) drunk, B) stoned, and C) drunk and stoned. C was definitely the worst ... I can't tell which was worse between A and B.
I agree that the impairment increase from even a small amount of alcohol added to cannabis is significant. I've been known to add a beer or two to a cannabis buzz, but only on occasions when I'm not driving. I'm hesitant to even get on a bicycle if I'm doing that.
But I've had extensive experience and observation of the effects of driving after using cannabis alone, and my conclusions are roughly in lines with those of Andrew Weil, MD over 50 years ago: in the commonly used dosages, cannabis is a catalyst to a mild mind-altering shift that isn't nearly as profound or debilitating as alcohol intoxication, and once people become familiar with the effects, as a rule they're able to perform activities like driving capably. Safely enough that I've never worried about getting in the car with a driver who had been smoking pot...hey, I was a cab driver.
Andrew Weil got it right about weed 50 years ago, in The Natural Mind. There's a reason why sports like snowboarding, halfpipe skateboarding, and surfing have such a long association with weed smokers, even at the elite level. Athletes trained in their skill can do all sorts of fancy gravity defying precision tricks while high out their mind on kine bud. That isn't possible with alcohol. Nobody ever learned how to carve those tracks while drunk. The extreme athletes save the beer for the ski lodge, the backyard, and the beach. At the physical coordination, balance, and athletic performance level, it's no contest: marijuana doesn't impair experienced users, but alcohol follows a very steep increase of impairment with increasing quantity.
This finding has repeatedly shown up in driving simulator tests, incidentally. The researchers keep trying ways to make weed wrong in those studies; these days, studies resort to tactics like force-toking the subjects (including cannabis newbies) for fifteen minutes and shoving them in the simulator ten minutes later- or torturing the data by moving the goalposts of the parameters said to detect impairment- in order to do it. And even then, the experienced stoners refuse to play along.
I'm of the mind that the epidemiological evidence is where the rubber meets the road on this question- there's plenty of data available, and even laypeople with basic math skills (ratios, percentages) can make reasoned and accurate inferences from the numbers without third-order extrapolated meta-analysis, chi-square distributions, or regression plots. Long story short: the smartphone began to add a whole other level of complication to safe driving about 10 years ago, and hopefully the problem will level off and decline. But we've had millions of stoned drivers on the road for around 55 years, and their performance doesn't track differently from the average. There's even some statistical indication that they do better. Even as far as clinical studies, after 40+ years of driving simulator tests, the meta-takeaway is still "the evidence for impairment is inconsistent." A neat choice of words. And not one that's applied to similar studies of alcohol impairment.
( That said, I'm opposed to using per se alcohol levels as sole proof of DUI. I think police cameras and performance tests are more accurate. I heard enough credibly narrated horror stories about overzealous DUI enforcement as a cabdriver in California that I've gotten very skeptical of chemical forensics to determine impairment. Scores of DUI convictions have been overturned and cases dismissed on account of investigations into bad lab work, in some local regions of the US. Peter Lance really booked a case on DUI enforcement abuses in his writings on the topic. http://peterlance.com/wordpress/?p=1214 )
Some skilled skateboarders can handle a bit of alcohol, I suppose. But you'd have to be a hell of a young, eagle-eyed mesomorph- and a practiced drinker- to skate half pipe after drinking a 40 oz. beer. I can't imagine anyone making a regular practice of that.
Mentally, I think a cannabis buzz is about equivalent to a one or two beer high, at most. But I've realized- also through experience- that I don't want a one-beer high when I'm learning a new scholastic skill, or a mental activity like learning a new language or a musical instrument. I want a two-coffee high, at least until I'm able to get a confident grasp of the activity. I want to learn stuff, not be high all the time.
I, too, occasionally drove drunk or drunk and stoned as a teenager in the 1970s. (I'm early 1970s. The HS class of 1973 is on the whole very different from the HS class of 1979, culturally.) It really was a different world...I knew at least one guy who had racked up three DWIs by his senior year in high school. And that's how long it took him to get his first license suspension. His first offense, was, I shit you not, a $50 fine. I think he also got 3 points on his driving record- and, if memory serves, 9 points meant a suspension. He got three DWIs in three years, the last one he wrapped his GTO around a telephone pole. So that was the 70s.
That guy was one of several of my high school classmates to get popped for alcohol DWI. But I never once heard of a single one of my classmates getting into an accident of any kind while driving stoned on pot, much less being pulled over for DWI. That empirical observation also influenced my opinion that marijuana didn't impair good driving the way alcohol does.
Not that I occasionally drove while high on pot, of course. I did it all the time. As did many of my classmates. I've since concluded that getting high on weed all the time at that age was a wrong, bad decision- at minimum, a terrible waste of time, opportunity, and my own resources. But impaired ability to drive safely was never part of the problem.
As for my experiences driving drunk on alcohol: for the grace of G~d, here I am, unscathed and unmarked by guilt. I never got in an accident, and not once was I pulled over by police, not even the time (or two?) when I was so loaded that I had to hold one hand over my eye to stay in my lane. I will give credit to what remained of my good judgement at the time that I had slowed the speed of the car to 15 miles an hour in order to compensate for the delays in my reaction time.
Yes, I was a bust. Even if it was only $50 and 3 points on my record, my parents- whose car it was- would have been scandalized. The weight of a full-scale shonda, only gentile style (more cross-cultural similarity there than is implied by the Yiddishism.) All it would have taken is crossing paths with one patrol car. But I was spared.
As for mixing cannabis with alcohol: if I'm not driving, I can pace a drink every hour while eating and have fun while being happily spaced out on pot. I might do that a couple times a year. Social occasions in the summertime.
But in the days when I drank to get drunk- a practice that predated my pot smoking, and one that I've long since given up- a few tokes of weed, and spin city. The vomitorium, baby. No bueno.
That untoward reaction to adding weed on top of a drunk would probably require only one toke of today's overhyped unsubtle superweed that I don't care for, incidentally. But since I have little use for pseudo-elite ultrahigh THC indoor grown factory weed, and even less use for getting hammered on booze, I don't plan to find out.
Many bar fights end in death or permanent injury. Many women are killed and raped by violent alcoholics. Cannabis does not have the same link to violence that alcohol does, you're not being fair.
I've seen my fair share of bar fights ... I don't know where you grew up but in my small Canadian town, no one ever died nor ended up with a permanent injury. I don't doubt that many women have suffered at the hands of a violent drunk (I'm a happy drunk, by the way) but that is no argument for pot, er ... cannabis.
The alcohol and cannabis comparison is flawed. Alcohol CAN be enjoyed simply as a beverage rather than as a drug (e.g. I have never seen my mother finish her second drink over a 50 year period). Cannabis is ALWAYS enjoyed as a drug even when used medicinally. Full disclosure: I enjoy both of them as drugs.
You're blowing smoke to try to confuse people. The use of the drug alcohol is so much more likely to lead to catastrophe than cannabis use that there is utterly no comparison.
How many people do you claim cannabis kills in a year? The figure for alcohol has skyrocketed in recent years to well over 100,000 lives a year, many of them innocent victims of murder and drunk driving murder.
Couldn't agree with you more. Let's treat alcohol like they did during Prohibition and see how it goes. I don't claim any number when it comes to cannabis but I was stoned enough times as a teenager to know that it is every bit as dangerous as alcohol.
I don't think so. I've certainly seen folks take a coupla puffs & then pass. Not what I usually do to be sure. But back when my liver could handle alcohol I didn't stop at one drink either. I think you're confused by words. We tend to call pot a drug but not alcohol. But that's just word usage. One can drink NA beer if one only wants the beverage experience. Most folks drink the kind with alcohol. 'Cause they want the effect, possibly in a light sort of way, just a little more relaxed etc
Lol I donтАЩt think you know what a drug is. If my friend has a beverage containing THC and doesnтАЩt finish it they are still ingesting a drug. Your mom is ingesting a drug even if sheтАЩs not getting *twisted* and alcohol is always enjoyed as a drug too bc water and other beveragesтАжexist ЁЯла
a drug is defined as тАЬa medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.тАЭ so advil is a drug as much as heroin as much as viagra as much as alcohol as much as nicotine as much as ketamine. commonly used in contexts like тАЬthe war on drugsтАЭ to indicate тАЬa substance taken that affects mood or behavior that is taken for its physiological effects (sophoriphic, stimulant, analgesic, etc.)тАЭ. alcohol meets this definition, as does mdma, as does heroin, as does oxycodone, as does prozac. thanks for your input ЁЯШК big statement, really glad you didnтАЩt try to back it up.
Not one word about alcohol. What are the chances the author likes to consume alcohol? I'd say pretty darn good.
Not much point in reading an article arguing for weed prohibition when it doesn't have a single word about alcohol vs. cannabis, which is of course the real issue.
I think that the case for cannabis legalization and drug law reform can be made without any necessity to resort to whataboutist arguments. Opponents prefer arguing on the merits of comparisons between pot and alcohol to arguing in favor of the Drug War on its merits- which, upon examination, are practically nonexistent.
It's not the "real" issue. They are two separate issues.
They are both psychoactive drugs but alcohol has FAR more of a link to VIOLENCE than cannabis does, and excessive alcohol use is FAR more damaging to physical health than excessive cannabis use. How dare people use the more dangerous drug and ORDER their FELLOW CITIZENS not to use an indisputably safer one! And to make it worse, the people giving the orders are the same folks who go on and on and on and on forever about freedom. The only freedom they care about it their goddamn own! Stinking hypocrites without a leg to stand on!
See "Graham" above.
came here to say тАЬIтАЩm an alcoholicтАж thatтАЩs it, thatтАЩs all I wanted to say.тАЭ that attitude is also reflected in the super brief line about how тАЬmost peopleтАЭ are not suggesting broader legalization policies for drugs like cocaine. sirтАжa drug is a drug is a drug is a drug, their physiological effects and addiction rates and addiction outcomes differ, but just because one addictive drug was the choice of the British empire (or more than one- alcohol, caffeine, nicotine) it doesnтАЩt mean other drugs are inherently different in ANY way whatsoever with regard to smart public policy for addictive drugs that maintains a focus on public health and bodily autonomy. I am sympathetic to the idea that marijuana legalization has not been pursued in a nuanced enough way to protect public health and safety, but you lose me completely when your takeaway is тАЬwell you know politically it would be hard to do in a better, positive way so instead of this big dumb policy letтАЩs go back to the other one.тАЭ marijuana arrests keep people out of work and struggling, and while state prison time might only be slightly more than 1 in 10 (!!!) for drug offenses I think thereтАЩs an argument to be made that peoples lives and finances and health (and their faultless childrenтАЩs) are far more drastically impacted by criminalization than by addiction, which by the way isnтАЩt helped AT ALL by criminalization!!! IтАЩm for highly regulated drug legalization or decrim and I appreciated the link to alternative models, IтАЩve also considered that it might be best executed through medical care (to where your doctor could тАЬprescribeтАЭ a psychedelic or MDMA or a recreational drug in a moderated amount upon request to maintain a usage record for intervention if necessary). consumption limits are not a bad idea. a complete lack of consistency just because thatтАЩs what has been done up to this point IS. because our healthcare system is fucked too, and mental healthcare is treated like a joke, over 50% of US counties donтАЩt even have a licensed psychiatrist - so the idea that continuing to criminalize addiction for some substances while allowing people intoxicated on others to spike crime rates, all because we canтАЩt treat and deal with addiction like the public health crisis it is, is maddening. the idea that people donтАЩt care about quality control also drives me crazy, it goes back to your point, people would still be making bathtub gin if safe alternatives werenтАЩt available, and the economic lens is justтАж тАЬColorado has had legal weed for 10 whole years and 1/3 still buy illicitтАЭ oh shit you mean in one decade the entire nature of buying & selling drugs hasnтАЩt shifted after a century of reliance on illicit networks?? IтАЩm shocked!!! itтАЩs just so goddamn frustrating, I agree with the тАЬmore persuasive argumentsтАЭ that people should be able to do what they want with their bodies and drugs are fun, but I also know with my brain that drugs are addictive and statistically everything that we criminalize from a puritanical mindset becomes completely corrupted and dangerous for people in the absence of regulation. internet porn is addictive, and it can be degrading, and there is exploitation, but the second it becomes criminalized it will be an all out free for all for the people in that world, for consumers, and effecting everyone outside the prison industrial complex negatively. itтАЩs so easy to sit in one life thatтАЩs gone one way and go тАЬno no, thatтАЩs better, thatтАЩs better for all the rest of usтАЭ but the continuing pattern is that itтАЩs not, that plenty of men of status and wealth are completely physically addicted to alcohol or cocaine or another drug of choice, they are not exempt from public health crises, they are not exempt from benefiting from the labor of sex workers, they are not exempt from gay sex or other formerly criminalized behavior that is associated with morality instead of physiology, and itтАЩs unfair and gross to act like some things should remain criminalized just because some people can get around that without huge, life altering consequences. it hurts all of us, it really hurts people in recovery because itтАЩs crowded in secrecyтАж and itтАЩs tiring. rant over ugh I had so much hope for this analysis.
"you lose me completely when your takeaway is 'well you know politically it would be hard to do in a better, positive way so instead of this big dumb policy letтАЩs go back to the other one.'"
Really. The argument already contained some disputable points, but that was where it completely went off the rails.
This seems in bad faith.
Myself, I think the marijuana and alcohol are about the same. Soft drugs that aren't good but maybe shouldn't be flat out illegal. Tax and regulate.
It's certainly possible that prohibition might have been a better idea in decades past. It's harder to prohibit things that are already prevalent and have a market, and that has to affect whether you try prohibition. But the cat is out of the bag.
The real problem is that people want to consider pot cool and blame crime on criminalization. It would be better if pot were lower status and everyone admitted that crime had different causes (and possibly that the IQ and inhibition lowering affects of drugs increases crime).
You can think what you like pal but if you were to look at reality you would see that alcohol causes way more problems than weed. I mean just ask a cop. Fights in bars? Check. Fights at pot parties (or "coffee shops" in Holland)? Nope, not really. For the record I like 'em both. So what?
A fight in a bar typically only ruins one evening. Like you, many people like 'em both. Do we really need stoned people driving drunk? Isn't being simply drunk bad enough? I've been that terrified passenger with a stoned drunk at the wheel on more than one occasion. I'm grateful and lucky to be here and to have never witnessed other innocent people dying. The only thing worse than a drunk is a stoned drunk.
So for some reason with someone both stoned & drunk you're okay with drunk. Which is utterly stupid 'cause driving drunk is waaay more dangerous than driving stoned.
But if you routinely ride with drunk drivers you really are quite stupid. I'd rather walk. Actually if someone is gonna drive drunk some pot might be in order since it would probly get them to slow down. Would only work if they were regular pot heads.
At no point did I claim that I am ok with driving drunk. Period, Jack Stoner.
If people driving under the influence of cannabis were actually a serious problem worthy of law enforcement concentration, it would have made the headlines decades ago, because millions of people have been doing it regularly for decades. It's only been 'discovered" as a "problem" or "menace" in the aftermath of legalization in some of the states, as if the situation only emerged in the last ten years.
I used to drive a cab in Sacramento, on the night shift for years; I regularly hauled passengers who had driving license suspensions for DUI. I never once had a passenger who had been arrested for driving under the influence of marijuana. I've talked to lawyers and police about "marijuana DUI." I used to solicit those observations. In all my conversations, I heard of one case- and it was someone who was pulled over while smoking behind the wheel.
In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, I attended a couple dozen music concerts in arenas and stadium-sized venues where the majority of the crowd got high before, during, and after the show. I used to stay until the parking lot had cleared out, because if there's one thing a driving professional can't stand, it's being stuck in traffic. In my decades of show-going, I observed a total of one fender-bender in the lot.
If cannabis was as bad as alcohol, the headlines in the aftermath of every one of those shows would have featured multiple collisions and mass carnage on the highways. Or, at minimum, mass arrests for DUI. If cannabis DUI had presented a problem, finding out about it would have required only a glance at the next day's headlines.
The crowd knew this. The cops knew this.
My argument is not that cannabis is worse than alcohol. My argument is that alcohol can be consumed as a beverage as opposed to a drug. Many people have one or two drinks and then refuse the second or third drink. Sober, no menace to anyone, on the road nor in a bar. Cannabis is always consumed as a drug. The people who claim that they need cannabis to deal with pain would consume it as a drug anyway. The mostly men living on the streets doing opioids are less likely to have started out as alcoholics than to have started out as pot smokers. Cannabis is too often a gateway drug. Alcohol has wreaked enough havoc on society. Why would anyone want to add YET another drug to the mix? There are not too many great "stoners" in history. There are, however, many great happy drunks in history. Winston Churchill, for one.
As a teenager in the 1970s, I occasionally drove A) drunk, B) stoned, and C) drunk and stoned. C was definitely the worst ... I can't tell which was worse between A and B.
I agree that the impairment increase from even a small amount of alcohol added to cannabis is significant. I've been known to add a beer or two to a cannabis buzz, but only on occasions when I'm not driving. I'm hesitant to even get on a bicycle if I'm doing that.
But I've had extensive experience and observation of the effects of driving after using cannabis alone, and my conclusions are roughly in lines with those of Andrew Weil, MD over 50 years ago: in the commonly used dosages, cannabis is a catalyst to a mild mind-altering shift that isn't nearly as profound or debilitating as alcohol intoxication, and once people become familiar with the effects, as a rule they're able to perform activities like driving capably. Safely enough that I've never worried about getting in the car with a driver who had been smoking pot...hey, I was a cab driver.
Andrew Weil got it right about weed 50 years ago, in The Natural Mind. There's a reason why sports like snowboarding, halfpipe skateboarding, and surfing have such a long association with weed smokers, even at the elite level. Athletes trained in their skill can do all sorts of fancy gravity defying precision tricks while high out their mind on kine bud. That isn't possible with alcohol. Nobody ever learned how to carve those tracks while drunk. The extreme athletes save the beer for the ski lodge, the backyard, and the beach. At the physical coordination, balance, and athletic performance level, it's no contest: marijuana doesn't impair experienced users, but alcohol follows a very steep increase of impairment with increasing quantity.
This finding has repeatedly shown up in driving simulator tests, incidentally. The researchers keep trying ways to make weed wrong in those studies; these days, studies resort to tactics like force-toking the subjects (including cannabis newbies) for fifteen minutes and shoving them in the simulator ten minutes later- or torturing the data by moving the goalposts of the parameters said to detect impairment- in order to do it. And even then, the experienced stoners refuse to play along.
I'm of the mind that the epidemiological evidence is where the rubber meets the road on this question- there's plenty of data available, and even laypeople with basic math skills (ratios, percentages) can make reasoned and accurate inferences from the numbers without third-order extrapolated meta-analysis, chi-square distributions, or regression plots. Long story short: the smartphone began to add a whole other level of complication to safe driving about 10 years ago, and hopefully the problem will level off and decline. But we've had millions of stoned drivers on the road for around 55 years, and their performance doesn't track differently from the average. There's even some statistical indication that they do better. Even as far as clinical studies, after 40+ years of driving simulator tests, the meta-takeaway is still "the evidence for impairment is inconsistent." A neat choice of words. And not one that's applied to similar studies of alcohol impairment.
( That said, I'm opposed to using per se alcohol levels as sole proof of DUI. I think police cameras and performance tests are more accurate. I heard enough credibly narrated horror stories about overzealous DUI enforcement as a cabdriver in California that I've gotten very skeptical of chemical forensics to determine impairment. Scores of DUI convictions have been overturned and cases dismissed on account of investigations into bad lab work, in some local regions of the US. Peter Lance really booked a case on DUI enforcement abuses in his writings on the topic. http://peterlance.com/wordpress/?p=1214 )
Some skilled skateboarders can handle a bit of alcohol, I suppose. But you'd have to be a hell of a young, eagle-eyed mesomorph- and a practiced drinker- to skate half pipe after drinking a 40 oz. beer. I can't imagine anyone making a regular practice of that.
Mentally, I think a cannabis buzz is about equivalent to a one or two beer high, at most. But I've realized- also through experience- that I don't want a one-beer high when I'm learning a new scholastic skill, or a mental activity like learning a new language or a musical instrument. I want a two-coffee high, at least until I'm able to get a confident grasp of the activity. I want to learn stuff, not be high all the time.
I, too, occasionally drove drunk or drunk and stoned as a teenager in the 1970s. (I'm early 1970s. The HS class of 1973 is on the whole very different from the HS class of 1979, culturally.) It really was a different world...I knew at least one guy who had racked up three DWIs by his senior year in high school. And that's how long it took him to get his first license suspension. His first offense, was, I shit you not, a $50 fine. I think he also got 3 points on his driving record- and, if memory serves, 9 points meant a suspension. He got three DWIs in three years, the last one he wrapped his GTO around a telephone pole. So that was the 70s.
That guy was one of several of my high school classmates to get popped for alcohol DWI. But I never once heard of a single one of my classmates getting into an accident of any kind while driving stoned on pot, much less being pulled over for DWI. That empirical observation also influenced my opinion that marijuana didn't impair good driving the way alcohol does.
Not that I occasionally drove while high on pot, of course. I did it all the time. As did many of my classmates. I've since concluded that getting high on weed all the time at that age was a wrong, bad decision- at minimum, a terrible waste of time, opportunity, and my own resources. But impaired ability to drive safely was never part of the problem.
As for my experiences driving drunk on alcohol: for the grace of G~d, here I am, unscathed and unmarked by guilt. I never got in an accident, and not once was I pulled over by police, not even the time (or two?) when I was so loaded that I had to hold one hand over my eye to stay in my lane. I will give credit to what remained of my good judgement at the time that I had slowed the speed of the car to 15 miles an hour in order to compensate for the delays in my reaction time.
Yes, I was a bust. Even if it was only $50 and 3 points on my record, my parents- whose car it was- would have been scandalized. The weight of a full-scale shonda, only gentile style (more cross-cultural similarity there than is implied by the Yiddishism.) All it would have taken is crossing paths with one patrol car. But I was spared.
As for mixing cannabis with alcohol: if I'm not driving, I can pace a drink every hour while eating and have fun while being happily spaced out on pot. I might do that a couple times a year. Social occasions in the summertime.
But in the days when I drank to get drunk- a practice that predated my pot smoking, and one that I've long since given up- a few tokes of weed, and spin city. The vomitorium, baby. No bueno.
That untoward reaction to adding weed on top of a drunk would probably require only one toke of today's overhyped unsubtle superweed that I don't care for, incidentally. But since I have little use for pseudo-elite ultrahigh THC indoor grown factory weed, and even less use for getting hammered on booze, I don't plan to find out.
Our world does not revolve around "dudes." There's nothing good to be said about "drugs." Cheers!
Many bar fights end in death or permanent injury. Many women are killed and raped by violent alcoholics. Cannabis does not have the same link to violence that alcohol does, you're not being fair.
I've seen my fair share of bar fights ... I don't know where you grew up but in my small Canadian town, no one ever died nor ended up with a permanent injury. I don't doubt that many women have suffered at the hands of a violent drunk (I'm a happy drunk, by the way) but that is no argument for pot, er ... cannabis.
The alcohol and cannabis comparison is flawed. Alcohol CAN be enjoyed simply as a beverage rather than as a drug (e.g. I have never seen my mother finish her second drink over a 50 year period). Cannabis is ALWAYS enjoyed as a drug even when used medicinally. Full disclosure: I enjoy both of them as drugs.
You're blowing smoke to try to confuse people. The use of the drug alcohol is so much more likely to lead to catastrophe than cannabis use that there is utterly no comparison.
How many people do you claim cannabis kills in a year? The figure for alcohol has skyrocketed in recent years to well over 100,000 lives a year, many of them innocent victims of murder and drunk driving murder.
Couldn't agree with you more. Let's treat alcohol like they did during Prohibition and see how it goes. I don't claim any number when it comes to cannabis but I was stoned enough times as a teenager to know that it is every bit as dangerous as alcohol.
I don't think so. I've certainly seen folks take a coupla puffs & then pass. Not what I usually do to be sure. But back when my liver could handle alcohol I didn't stop at one drink either. I think you're confused by words. We tend to call pot a drug but not alcohol. But that's just word usage. One can drink NA beer if one only wants the beverage experience. Most folks drink the kind with alcohol. 'Cause they want the effect, possibly in a light sort of way, just a little more relaxed etc
Exactly, which is why my mother purchases no/low alcohol beer in the summertime. I was referring to wine and the hard stuff.
Lol I donтАЩt think you know what a drug is. If my friend has a beverage containing THC and doesnтАЩt finish it they are still ingesting a drug. Your mom is ingesting a drug even if sheтАЩs not getting *twisted* and alcohol is always enjoyed as a drug too bc water and other beveragesтАжexist ЁЯла
You clearly don't know what a drug is.
a drug is defined as тАЬa medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.тАЭ so advil is a drug as much as heroin as much as viagra as much as alcohol as much as nicotine as much as ketamine. commonly used in contexts like тАЬthe war on drugsтАЭ to indicate тАЬa substance taken that affects mood or behavior that is taken for its physiological effects (sophoriphic, stimulant, analgesic, etc.)тАЭ. alcohol meets this definition, as does mdma, as does heroin, as does oxycodone, as does prozac. thanks for your input ЁЯШК big statement, really glad you didnтАЩt try to back it up.
Ah, so that's what you're talking about. I thought we were talking about beer and weed.