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Weed is bad for young people. Is it really worse than alcohol? I think a lot of people have limited experience with true alcoholics, they’ve always seemed worse afflicted to me, and I say that as someone who prefers booze to weed.
The thing about stoners is that while weed saps motivation and leads to many a wasted life, they’re not really dangerous in and of themselves, and in an age of mass automation and bullshit jobs, I don’t think maximizing labor force participation is critical enough that forcing them off the couch is necessary.
I would lay down the law if my teenage child started smoking weed, but as a vaguely responsible adult I enjoy it before bed and have a relatively respectable and moderately successful career.
I've known true alcoholics who still manage to hold down a job and live a normal-ish life, but I've never known a true stoner who was able to do this. Even light smokers seem to have more fucked up lives than light stoners. Alcohol will kill you faster, though.
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What do you mean by ‘true alcoholics’? Like the question ‘is being addicted to alcohol or weed worse’ is one which depends on categorization to answer.
Presumably they mean dysfunctional alcoholics drive drunk, beat their kids, lose their job, etc...
But most alcoholics are functional alcoholics who suffer no social problems from drinking, merely health problems.
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It’s kinda hard to tell. One advantage that mitigated the damage alcohol does is the notion of alcoholics and drinking too much being bad. Everyone is pretty much aware that drinking 3+ days a week and more than 2 in a sitting is probably a sign of problems. With cannabis, you can tome up every single day and not think you’re addicted. There is no point where even your pot smoking buddy will tell you to get help.
Tbf, the same is true of gaming and screens (which can absolutely be addictive). We simply haven’t yet put up guard rails around th3 behavior to prevent people from gett Seriously addicted.
More than two in a sitting is seen as a problem? I can’t tell if I’m in a bubble or if you are. I’m not even slightly buzzed after two drinks, and I only drink a few times per year.
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Alcohol is worse. And, obviously, prohibition of alcohol has been tried and it didn't work.
But marijuana was already prohibited, and it's not like there were weed gangs with tommy guns ruling Chicago. The disruptions caused by the illegal marijuana trade were relatively mild. And legalization has created millions of addicts that didn't exist before. (It's not the same sort of addiction as an opiate or alcohol addiction, but it is addiction none the less. If you wake-and-bake, you're an addict).
Now that these addicts exist, it would be virtually impossible to re-ban marijuana. Which is another reason not to have legalized it: it's a one-way ratchet.
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