Alcohol or Marijuana? A Pediatrician Faces the Question

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependencereports that alcohol use is a factor in 40 percent of all violent crimes in the United States, including 37 percent of rapes and 27 percent of aggravated assaults. ...

More than 17 percent of all people in the United States are binge drinkers, and more than 28 percent of people age 18 to 24. Binge drinking is more common among people with a household income of at least $75,000. This is a solid middle-class problem.

Marijuana, on the other hand, kills almost no one. The number of deaths attributed to marijuana use is pretty much zero. A study that tracked more than 45,000 Swedes for 15 years found no increase in mortality in those who used marijuana, after controlling for other factors. Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health followed more than 65,000 people in the United States and found that marijuana use had no effect at all on mortality in healthy men and women.

I think about which is more dangerous when driving. A 2013 case-control study found that marijuana use increased the odds of being in a fatal crash by 83 percent. But adding alcohol to drug use increased the odds of a fatal crash by more than 2,200 percent. A more recent study found that, after controlling for various factors, a detectable amount of THC, the active ingredient in pot, in the blood did not increase the risk of accidents at all. Having a blood alcohol level of at least 0.05 percent, though, increased the odds of being in a crash by 575 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/u...typ=aut&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

 

Oy.

 

I agree that alcohol should be illegal, too.

 

Over/under on the Yankeefan posts in this thread?

 

Ahh, but that study misses the deadly link. How many obesity-related deaths are due to marijuana-induced Dorito consumption?

 

I don't drink or smoke pot, but I used to do both, and I think it's safe to say, I did more stupid things after drinking than I ever did after smoking pot.

Drinking = Going out and getting into a fight
Pot= Lying on my futon listening to White Summer, Black Mountainside on a continuous loop.

It doesn't seem close...

 

Alcohol breath or the weed cloud: Which smells worse?

I say a tie.

 

Depends on which kind of alcohol/weed.

 

There is NOTHING worse than day-after whiskey breath.

 

Does anyone watch Kroll Show? If you don't, you should. This thread reminds me of watching an episode a few weeks ago where Jon Daly talked about having a medical marijuana card for the ailments of "Anxiety, and my neck hurts sometimes."