Whats worse Booze or Weed?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Which do you think is worse for the individual and society and why Pot or Alcohol?

[Kanamori]

I can never quite picture Gawain taking some hits w/o chuckling to myself...

[Kanamori]

I can handle them... take 'em away from everyone else and leave it to those who are responsible, like me



And, don't you think bud every day is a little excessive, Gawain? See, we've already found someone who can't handle it.

[Zalmoxis]

Weed, as you say, can be used to help leachemia patients, while alcohol does things only alcohol can do, both as bad.

[monkian]

Booze is the worst everytime.

It can make people very violent - we all know this to be a fact - I've been beaten up many a time by pissed up wankers. Never felt violent or seen anyone being violent or destructive under the effect of weed.


Alcohol is also alot easier to consume even when you've had too much - you can't skin up if you've smoked or eaten too much weed.

Plus state funded growth of Marijuana can produce alot more than just delicious bundles of smoking fun.

[Navaros]

Booze is worse but both of them are disgusting and pointless vices which no intelligent form of life should ever indulge in.

Best thing to do: universal ban on both and ridiculously-long prison sentences for anyone who uses them after the ban.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Weed.

First of all, it's illegal. That means it's bad, usually. 9 times out of 10 at least. Also, weed causes Cancer, and gives people around you cancer. It causes the munchies and makes people incredibly thin.

Alcohol, on the other hand, tastes good, is ok as long as you don't get smashed, only punishes the liver, and best of all, is at least semi-legal!

[Craterus]

I agree with the people that have said alcohol is worse. It is.

But weed is not good either. Smoking (cigarettes) should be banned, if you were to ban alcohol.

[AntiochusIII]

I agree with the people that have said alcohol is worse. It is.

But weed is not good either. Smoking (cigarettes) should be banned, if you were to ban alcohol.

Considering I am a teetotaler and non-smoker, I advocate banning both. But since I am more liberal than many in terms of social issue, I could not bring myself to advocate banning both against my principles. See the paradox? Weed and alcohol are bad. Alcohol is worse in terms of it being more damaging to society (just observe all the drunk drivers out there.) I vote both are just as bad. Unfortunately, so many people are, sadly, relying on alcohol in everyday life that banning it could've caused another prohibition period.

However, considering the laws around these, I found them to be highly hypocritical, even if I understand the motives behind them. Why ban "weed" (different from cigarettes a bit, though I hate both, with cigarettes being more passionately so--it harms me with more nicotin in my lungs when it's them smoking the damn thing everywhere; I could've claimed that I feel threatened and stab them if I'm in Florida--pot I've been less exposed to) that can only really harm an individual (which many, including me, would argue for his/her personal liberty/responsiblity) while alcohol, which continuously causes side effect damages, are legal?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I voted for "pot" as the worse of the two -- but the both option was quite tempting.

My experience with alchohol is both personal and familial, with marijuana its familial and vicarious through friends and acquaintances.

As noted above, the long term physical effects of prolonged drinking at moderate or better levels can be devastating. Alcohol is more likely to kill through poisoning death than is marijuana. As a mood alterer, alcohol is more likely to trigger aggression and violence.

Both alter a person's physical reactions and judgement. Thus either can make it unwise to drive etc. Both are more problematic when used to excess than when used in moderation.

Marijauna use, since smoking is the primary form of use, can also be associated with lung cancer and other long term pulmonary problems, but does not trigger diabetes or some of the things alcohol does. The mood/attitude alteration effects of marijauna can last substantially longer than those associated with alcohol -- in part precisely because the physical side effects are less debilitating.

Which leads to my vote: I have known too many bright people who used MJ, and ended up trashing years of their life as a consequence. One example is a younger brother who started enjoying "weed" in college, and then "woke up" 6 or so years later realizing that he had accomplished absolutely nothing of worth in the interim. He received no lasting harm, he did not alter his genes, he even managed to get a degree (on autopilot as his grades indicated). But he managed to achieve zork toward having a useful and productive life and was playing "catch up" for years.
The clear majority of those getting drunk on weekends pretty much give up drinking after a few years, but the side-effects of drinking mean that most people do not stay drunk for long and get lots of stuff done when not -- not so the other "substance." Sadly, the one's who go on years-long "vacations" with marijuana tend to be the brighter ones, magnifying the loss for them and for all of us.

Seamus

[Redleg]

In moderation neither is really a problem for the individual.

Achocol has a benefit of helping the blood system when used in moderation.

Pot has a medical benefit for easing some pain associated with several conditions.

Used in extreme or in excess both are bad. Because of this extremes society suffers because of it.

[King Henry V]

Pot has a medical benefit for easing some pain associated with several conditions.

So does morphine. Should that be made readily available?

[Soulforged]

So does morphine. Should that be made readily available?

No it should be available wheter it causes pain or pleasure, or both, what's your point?

[Craterus]

So does morphine. Should that be made readily available?

Did he say that it should? I don't think so. He was just posting a good thing that weed does.

Alcohol, however, doesn't really have an advantage...

[King Henry V]

Did he say that it should? I don't think so. He was just posting a good thing that weed does.

Alcohol, however, doesn't really have an advantage...

No, but what many people have siad is that "marijuana is ok because it cna help with pain". So does morphine.

[Divinus Arma]

Alcohol, however, doesn't really have an advantage...

The advantage of alcohol is clear:

It makes me drunk and then I post ridiculous nonsense.

[Craterus]

You can post nonsense without alcohol, therfore, no advantage.

[Del Arroyo]

The advantage of alcohol is clear:

It makes me drunk and then I post ridiculous nonsense.

The really funny thing is that I actually never suspected this before

A few things do make alot more sense now...

DA

[King Henry V]

IMO pot is bad because it scrambles you brain and can lead to schyzophrenia as well as cancer. I think that as we are getting ever stricter with smoking, this is not the time to get softer on cannabis. It also has a most repugnant stink.
Alcohol is bad only when too much is consumed. A glass of alcohol every evening is not as bad for you as a joint every night. However, when used extremely, alcohol can be more damagin, so I think that both are as bad as each other.

[Steppe Merc]

Booze is worse. It seems to me it is causes far more often negative affects. And it isn't as fun.

IMO pot is bad because it scrambles you brain and can lead to schyzophrenia as well as cancer. I think that as we are getting ever stricter with smoking, this is not the time to get softer on cannabis. It also has a most repugnant stink.

It doesn't smell bad! It smells way better than damn cigarrettes. Pot smells very good. Alchol smells worse than pot.

And what proof is there that it causes scizophrenia? Alcholism is really bad, btw. You can't get addicted to pot, but you certaintly can to alchol. I have a large history of alcholism in my family, and it's not pretty.

[King Henry V]

Booze is worse. It seems to me it is causes far more often negative affects. And it isn't as fun.


It doesn't smell bad! It smells way better than damn cigarrettes. Pot smells very good. Alchol smells worse than pot.

And what proof is there that it causes scizophrenia? Alcholism is really bad, btw. You can't get addicted to pot, but you certaintly can to alchol. I have a large history of alcholism in my family, and it's not pretty.

Pot ,IMO, has a horrible, sickly sweet smell that makes me want to puke. Cigarettes don't do that, but I can't really breathe with smoke in my face. Then again, you can't really breathe when you want to puke. Alacohol can smell bad (like bad wine or something), but it does not have an over powering stench.You can get addicted to pot in the way that you begin to really miss the effects of the drug. And from articles that I have read, cannabis can cause schizophrenia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4305783.stm

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Booze is worse. It seems to me it is causes far more often negative affects. And it isn't as fun.


It doesn't smell bad! It smells way better than damn cigarrettes. Pot smells very good. Alchol smells worse than pot.

And what proof is there that it causes scizophrenia? Alcholism is really bad, btw. You can't get addicted to pot, but you certaintly can to alchol. I have a large history of alcholism in my family, and it's not pretty.

Booze isn't as fun! Booze is the ball! You can do fun things like get drunk and lose a friend at a pothead festival during a school-sponsored event!

[Steppe Merc]

Booze isn't as fun! Booze is the ball! You can do fun things like get drunk and lose a friend at a pothead festival during a school-sponsored event!

Yeah, or be like my friend, get drunk, pass out at a school football game, go to the hospital to get your stomach pumped, get suspended, have your car impounded, not be able to go on the school trip to Disney World, and be grounded for the next 6 months. Yay.

Oh, and pot smells wonderful. It just smells great. My dad agrees with me on the smell, that cigarrettes smell way worse. If I'm at a concert, and I'm not smoking, the smell of pot always cheers me up, gets me in the right refrence.

[mystic brew]

Booze is worse. It seems to me it is causes far more often negative affects. And it isn't as fun.

It doesn't smell bad! It smells way better than damn cigarrettes. Pot smells very good. Alchol smells worse than pot.

And what proof is there that it causes scizophrenia? Alcholism is really bad, btw. You can't get addicted to pot, but you certaintly can to alchol. I have a large history of alcholism in my family, and it's not pretty.

absolutely agreed with most what you say, and i can't furnish you with precise data, though according to my friend, a psychiatric doctor studying and working closely with these things, he says the evidence is pretty clear that although MJ doesn't cause psychiatric illnesses, it is a trigger if there is an underlying tendency.

decent overview from the British Medical Journal here:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/conte.../325/7374/1183

a problem, currently in both alcohol and MJ is a trend towards strength. beers and alcohopops are becoming stronger. In the UK, a demographic change of ale towards lager seems innocuous enough. Ale's 20 years ago were at an average of 3.4%, while premium lagers now are up at 4.8-5%.

In a similar, though even more extreme way brands of dope have gained strength, hydroponic skunks and so on. some estimates have put the increase since the 60s at 6-7fold, but it's hard to gauge.

[Tribesman]

a problem, currently in both alcohol and MJ is a trend towards strength. beers and alcohopops are becoming stronger. In the UK, a demographic change of ale towards lager seems innocuous enough. Ale's 20 years ago were at an average of 3.4%, while premium lagers now are up at 4.8-5%.

Yet if you look further back than 20 years many beers were stronger than the 4.8-5% and if you look into it , it was normal to drink a gallon a day of 8% beer starting with breakfast . Ever drunk any of the Trappist stuff ? Not surprising they have a vow of silence , who knows what sort of drunken rubbish they would be talking after drinking that .
Oh and alcopops are not stronger , just a more expensive way of buying spirits diluted with fizzy stuff , a successful marketing ploy to exploit the idiots .

[Kraxis]

Guys we can't discuss subjective oppinions, such as smell. We can use them as arguments but we can't tell another that he is wrong for his smell of things.

Personally I prefer pot-smell over tobacco (reversed if it is unburnt though, then tobacco is very pleasing to my nostrils).
I'm an odd person when it comes to the use of pot. I have always been an adamant anti-smoker (personally, couldn't care less about others), but I did smoke that. Perhaps that was part of my reason for stopping? I don't know.

While I think cancer has a higher chance of settling in in your lungs if you smoke pot (you can eat and drink it too, which are very safe ways), it is certain that alcohol will destroy your liver at some point. Alcohol slowly destroys it, it is not based on chance as with cancer. Thus if you a are a heavy drinker you shold be very concerned really. Some can take much more than others in regards to liverdestruction but it will come eventually.
Not so with the cancer. So I think the point goes to pot there.

Alcohol doesn't make you aggressive per se, but you are going to react much stronger. You might flinch and become much more fearful (and we all know the crying drunk right?) or you might react with aggression to something that would only slightly annoy you.
I have never been in a fight I did anything to start (I had to defend myself from unprovoked attacks though), but once when I was drunk I nearly exploded with anger when a guy kept pushing me in the back (not intentionally of course). Had I not been a normally extremely calm guy I think I would have flattened him (he was even more drunk than me so I think it is a safe bet). That wa not normal an I would never have reacted similarly if I was sober.
But once when I was stoned a guy intentionally pissed on my leg, and I couldn't help but laugh at it, it just seemed so increadibly stupid and silly. I think had I been drunk I would have gone at his throat right away. Had I been sober I think I would have too.
Add to that that I have seen far too much alcoholaffected aggression caused by normally calm guys.

Alcohol makes you unstable if you drink above a certain limit.

On the other hand you CAN get psychoses from pot, but they are rare and not much of a factor in this discussion.

From personal experience I will say that the only reason to not TRY pot or similar product (MJ, hashis ect ect) is because it is illegal. Not other point really as a single spliff simply don't do damage of any kind worth mentioning. To say it would lead to many more is wrong as you just need to be firm on it, like with alcohol or cakes or soda or too much food... You get the point.

Personally I would prefer it getting lagalized. Earn money from it and control it. Perfect.

Oh will that cause widespread usage??? Not at all, Holland has one of the lowest 'tried' rates for pot in Europe.

[Soulforged]

While I think cancer has a higher chance of settling in in your lungs if you smoke pot

No.

Personally I would prefer it getting lagalized. Earn money from it and control it. Perfect.

Oh will that cause widespread usage???

It doesn't matter.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

LaGuardia Report Turns 50:

The massive research project was carried out by a team of scientists from the New York Academy of Medicine and the commissioners of the New York Departments of Correction, Health, and Hospitals. It was the most thorough, extensive marijuana fact-finding mission since the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission released its monumental report in 1894.

The LaGuardia Report was comprised of a series of studies -- from sociological observations to controlled, scientific studies involving the consumption of marijuana by subjects in a laboratory setting. Among the report's conclusions:

Mental Illness -- "Indulgence in marihuana does not appear to result in mental deterioration. ... Marihuana does not change the basic personality structure of the individual. It lessens inhibition and this brings out what is latent in his thoughts and emotions but it does not evoke responses which would otherwise be totally alien to him."
Violence -- "There was no aggressive or violent behavior observed."
Crime -- "Marihuana is not the determining factor in the commission of major crimes. Juvenile delinquency is not associated with the practice of smoking marihuana."
Addiction -- "The practice of smoking marihuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word."
Gateway to Hard Drugs -- "We have been unable to confirm ... that marihuana smoking is the first step in the use of such drugs as cocaine, morphine, and heroin. The instances are extremely rare where the habit of marihuana smoking is associated with addiction to these other narcotics."
In sum, the report stressed, "The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded." The depth and thoroughness of the study make these conclusions relevant beyond 1940s New York.

The LaGuardia Report provided invaluable descriptive data and dispelled many of the myths which led to the prohibition of marijuana. Nevertheless, it was essentially ignored and had virtually no effect on the burgeoning national policy of prohibition.

Do most of you know this war on drugs started as a form of racism and an excuse to send Mexican immigrants back to Mexico? The guy who started it was a bureacrat whos main interest was making his bureau bigger.

It seems cocaine was fine until rumors of cocaine crazed negroes rapping white women and impervious to bullets started appearing in places like the New York Times. I see not much has changed since then.

NEGRO COCAINE "FIENDS" NEW SOUTHERN MENACE

New York Times, Sunday February 8, 1914

Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower Class Because They Have Taken to "Sniffing" Since Being Deprived of Whisky by Prohibition

Edward Huntington Williams, M.D.

For some years there have been rumors about the increase in drug taking in the South-vague, but always insistent rumors that the addiction to such drugs as morphine and cocaine was becoming a veritable curse to the colored race in certain regions. Some of these reports read like the wildest flights of a sensational fiction writer. Stories of cocaine orgies and "sniffing parties" followed by wholesale murders seem like lurid journalism of the yellowest variety



But these comparisons, although sufficiently startling, fail to show the extent of drug addiction in the South. For most of these insane drug users, both North and South, were the victims of morphine; whereas the negro drug "fiend" uses cocaine almost exclusively.


Proof against Bullets.

But the drug produces several other conditions which make the "fiend" a peculiarly dangerous criminal. One of these conditions is a temporary immunity to shock--a resistance to the knockdown effects of fatal wounds.

Bullets fired into vital parts, that would drop a sane man in his tracks, fail to check the "fiend"--fail to stop his rush or weaken his attack.

A few weeks ago Dr. Crile's method of preventing shock in anaesthetized patients by use of a cocaine preparation was described in these columns. A similar fortification against this condition seems to be produced in the cocaine-sniffing negro.



Why Do They Do It?

Many of the negroes, even those who have not yet become addicted, appreciate the frightful penalty of dabbling with the drug. Why, then do so many of them "dabble"?

There are various facts that suggest an answer to this question, and evidence in the form or the opinions of physicians, officers, and the cocaine users themselves, that supports these facts. The "fiend" when questioned, frequently gives his reason in this brief sentence: ''Cause I couldn't git nothin' else, boss." That seems to be the crux of the whole matter.

A brief survey of conditions in the South and a bit of recent legislative history make it perfectly evident why the negro "couldn't git nothin' else."

But meanwhile these politicians have forced a new and terrible form of slavery upon thousands of colored men--a hideous bondage from which they cannot escape by mere proclamation or civil war.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/...ine_fiends.htm

A History of U.S. Drug Laws
- or -
How did we get into this mess? Part 1: 1898-1933

http://www.dpft.org/history.html

And heres the racism in the pot laws

Even when it was not against the law, marijuana was used by very few Americans. Those who used it were typically from minority groups like the Mexicans and the Negroes, and this made them and their drug preferences highly visible. The fact that these people smoked marijuana for pleasure made marijuana a vice that was doubly suspect, since the American work ethic never recognized anything like an "artificial paradise".

Marihuana and Violence

As the most conspicuous users of marihuana, Mexicans were oftentimes accused of being incited to violence by the drug. A letter written in 1911 by the American consul at Nogales, Mexico, stated that marihuana "causes the smoker to become exceedingly pugnacious and to run amuck without discrimination." [7] A Texas police captain claimed that under marihuana's baneful influence, Mexicans became "very violent, especially when they become angry and will attack an officer even if a gun is drawn on him. They seem to have no fear, I have also noted that when under the influence of this weed they have enormous strength and that it will take several men to handle one man while under ordinary circumstances one man could handle him with ease." [8]

Prison officials throughout the southwest had no doubt about marihuana's capacity to provoke violence. In the words of the warden of the state prison in Yuma, Arizona: "Under its baseful influence reckless men become bloodthirsty, terribly daring, and dangerous to an uncontrollable degree." [9]

The Butte Montana Standard reflected the thinking of the state's legislators when they outlawed marihuana in 1927:

When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." [10]

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/...st12000/11.htm

[bmolsson]

problem, currently in both alcohol and MJ is a trend towards strength. .

Isn't that more value for money ??

[Adrian II]

Which do you think is worse for the individual and society and why Pot or Alcohol?

The correct answer of course is Gah! Neither are bad for society. Drugs don't kill, steal, cause road accidents or break window panes.

Sex -- now there is a dangerous addiction...