Alcohol is pretty terrible for your body and is carcinogenic. Then again, so is sunlight, or, as the parent pointed out, sugar, sat-fats, etc. The difference is I need some amount of sunlight and saturated fat to live.
Alcohol also heavily correlates with assaults, rapes, domestic violence, and murder. Something crazy high like 60% or more of assaults. Ditto for things like car accidents after 9pm -- overwhelmingly alcohol related. DUIs kill a non-trivial amount of people.
I’m not saying it doesn’t but alcohol causes so many unnecessary deaths in society due to drunk driving. Note: I’m not advocating for alcohol to be banned.
It isn't. My state is looking into making the penalties stronger and people are generally favorable for that because they still see people driving every day with their face glued to their phone.
The only people against distracted driving penalties are people who are entitled and think they should be able to put others in danger for their minor convenience or libertarian assholes who think seatbelt laws are oppressive nanny stating.
Selective enforcement and high penalties is not a solution. Simply enforcing existing laws would be trivial and solve the issue. The only problem is people would not really want that, just like they would not want police to enforce speed limit laws.
The other way to think about this, how much of our phone use when driving is because of lack of public transit and the requirement to commute to work? There are different ways of addressing the same problem.
What is psychosis defined as, and how is it any worse than the effects of excess alcohol consumption?
On 30+ years, I have never seen someone get violent from cannabis, but with alcohol, it is a regular occurrence.
Worked at a hotel when I was younger too, and you can bring me a hotel full of people high on cannabis, and the worst they ever did was buy a ton of snacks.
Alcohol, on the other hand, was responsible for noise complaints, broken televisions, furniture, sexual assault, violent assault, cops being called all the time, etc.
Look. Maybe I'm crazy, but being unable to control one's emotions is a much less severe condition than not being able to know what is real and what is not for the individual in question.
As an aside, my father was an alcoholic and a pathetic loser indulging in as much alcohol as self-pity. I am not defending excessive alcohol consumption.
My point is: Even if you think weed is relatively better than alcohol from a big picture societal POV (we can agree to disagree here), don't underestimate the bad effects of weed. Don't be a weed-smoking loser just because it's legal.
> I know that psychosis on alcohol happens, but I have never personally seen a person get psychotic from alcohol.
I was a bartender for a while in college and off-and-on afterwards. I've seen dozens of barfights, several with people ending up in hospitals. No shootings, thankfully, but that absolutely happens outside of bars and clubs.
There were at least 3 fatal DUIs that were traced back to coming from bars that I worked at; it led to the closure of one of them.
Alcohol correlates directly to levels of domestic abuse, rape, assault, and murder. Most traffic accidents after 9pm are alcohol related.
Been to Oktoberfest. All of the Brit, Irish, Canadian and Australian members of the crew could not believe that much alcohol in one place without any barfights/disputes/blah.
I've been to Oktoberfest, too. My brother lived in Bavaria for a while.
There were several fights, some blatant abuse of cocaine, and one of my female friends had someone get a hand down her pants and squeeze her butt without permission.
No one got shot or stabbed, but it certainly wasn't a peaceful hangout.