The very impressive sounding Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs in England recently rated alcohol as almost four times more harmful than marijuana. In other news, the IPCC claimed the sky is falling. In other words, just because it's written don't make it so.
In reality alcohol leads to slurring and unrestrained promiscuity, but pot makes everybody stupid. Studies indicating it's deleterious effects on both long and short term memories are legion and the shrunken amygdala and hypothalamus evident in regular users is a medical fact. It is carcinogenic and purportedly associated with the onset of schizophrenia.
I say, 'purportedly'. Proponents will argue the possibility that schizophrenia leads to smoking up, not the other way around. That 'possibility' being a given, when pot smokers are more likely to be diagnosed with the disease, (according to another British study) you do so at your own risk. Or do you?
When you're unemployable and on government funded medication to stabilize your condition, as a taxpayer, I'm very much on the hook. And therein lies just one of the problems with legalized pot.
Alan Shanoff in the Calgary Sun (Nov 7/2010) argues that all prohibition has "managed to do is push up the price of pot," making it less accessible. Reducing the number of schizophrenics in society. Long live prohibition, I say.
Pick your poison! Be it alcohol or pot or coffee or whatever have you. To point the finger at one in particular makes me laugh!
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