[Nursie]

> Meanwhile you have youtube channels presenting them as you would have a beer.

Well, you should be careful about that beer. Actually you should probably be more careful about that beer.

If you feel people are being too blase about cannabis, then you ought to be horrified at how popular culture treats alcohol. Alcohol is toxic, it's a killer in both acute and chronic scenarios. It's carcinogenic, harmful to a lot of your internal organs, it's addictive, it's fattening, it can even cause seizures if stopped too quickly. It causes mental health problems and mental decline. It really is one of the worst drugs and its annual death-toll beats out all other drugs combined.

No drug use is without problems, but this societal attitude that "drugs" are bad, but "just a beer" is fine... it's flat out deluded.

So I have no problem treating a lot of forms of drug use, particularly of drugs like cannabis and other less-harmful substances, just like someone having a beer.

[trabant00]

I agree on alcohol issues 100%. But drugs are in addition to alcohol, not instead of. And we figured the troubles with alcohol way too late to have any chance of removing it from its potential abusers. Drugs, especially synthetic, we understood their danger before they became socially acceptable.

[Nursie]

> But drugs are in addition to alcohol, not instead of.

What do you mean by that?

How is that relevant to whether we should treat drugs the same as or differently to "having a beer" ?

In particular you seemed to think it was wrong that they were treated the same or similarly by youtubers - but if the relative harms are comparable or even lesser for many drugs, why is this wrong?

Do you think if more drugs were legal alcohol consumption might not drop in some places?

There appears to be some evidence that in states with legal cannabis, for instance, binge drinking declines - https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeadams/2018/04/05/binge-drin...

[trabant00]

Weed and beer are comparable imo. I would even pick weed as the healthier option. But synthetic drugs exist and those are a different story.

And what I ment with that is that you would unleash some other abusable substances into society.

[Nursie]

Most 'synthetic' drugs are safer than alcohol too.

Psychedelics offer little in the way of physical risk and are not addictive in the same way.

Honestly they concern me far less than alcohol. It's booze, tobacco, meth, cocaine and heroin you want to really watch out for.

(edit - and we can probably include synthetic cannabinoids in there as well)