Alcohol is it our single biggest social problem?

That's awfully inconsiderate. You could save someone here from dying of lung cancer.

You have the holy grail of information, yet you are hiding it. It's been asked for. How can you be so cruel toward your fellow human?

It won't cause problems you're referring to, that's for sure.

The phrase could possibly be something along the lines of "altered state of consciousness."

Some of us play fair in debates, you certainly do not.

 

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I can hardy wait.
It will happen.

You completely missed my point.
I was not advocating driving stoned.
I was saying that there is a DRASTIC difference between:
a.) Drinking
and
b.) DRIVING impaired.

Impaired can be by alchohol, other drugs, or even severe lack of sleep.
There is nothing wrong with BEING impaired, there is everything wrong with DRIVING impaired, and it is absured to ban something because some people use it irresponsibly.
Ban the irresponsible use of it.

No, it SHOULD BE my choice, but unfortunately, it is illegal. That's the point.

 

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Way back when they did tests of driving skills while stoned and found no evidence that marijuana impairs driving. In a real world people would only be charged with driving while impaired if it had actually been proven, rather than assumed, that they are impaired. I've always thought that life would be safer in many ways if people substituted marijuana for alcohol, and this is one of them. I wouldn't want to drive while stoned, and that might be yet another safety factor.

One additional fact is that the marijuana high is generally shorter lived, not much more than 15-30 minutes when smoked, so the user is already coming down, and it's an easier letdown. The processes of the body make a person drunker and drunker in that same period of time partly because it hasn't all been absorbed yet and partly because it's not intoxicating until the liver converts it.

Most of the case against pot is willful ignorance.

 

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Speaking as a former user of over 30 years, I disagree. Driving while stoned, it is easy to get disorientated and suddenly feel that you don't know the road (even a familiar one) or that you've missed your turning or whatever and that can produce a paranoia effect, which is not good when you are in charge of a moving vehicle. It is also common to lightly hallucinate as you drive stoned, especially if your high is compounded by tiredness, rain, or night driving, or a combination of all three.

The average high including come-down (zoning), from one joint of good bud (just a pinch) mixed with tobacco lasts approx 4-6 hours, not 30 just minutes as you suggested. Eating cannabis is even less predictable, because it may take up to 2 hours to feel the effect and after that you could be zoning in and out for up to 12 hours.

Having said that, you can never get as delibitated with cannabis as you can with alcohol, not even close, especially if you don't mix it with alcohol or other drugs.

 

everyone's different. especially with marijuana; the way it makes you high depends largely on the chemical makeup of your brain. when i used to smoke i found that i actually drove better when i was high (it was a manual though).

i agree with you about the come-down time. you're really only high for about an hour, but after that it feels like you're groggy from just waking up or you're so tired you're about to go to sleep. but after building up a tolerance for it, the come-down effect isn't nearly as debilitating and it just feels like you are getting less and less high for a couple of hours.

 

i dunno, i grew up in germany, where drinking happened alot (legal at 16... ahh the memories...), but even there, you were either a responsible social drinker, or you're like my roomate, who just two nights ago almost died from racing a fellow alkie in "who could finish their bottle of UV Blue vodka first". Had to wake up every hour to roll his drunk ass over so he'd stop gurgling his vomit. I hate to sound naive, but I think people over here don't know what they're doing early enough. I mean, in europe, lower drinking ages mean people can get used to it earlier, their parents can be around to point fingers, etc, so when you're on your own, you know your limits. In america, you're out of the house, to go to parties, and you learn in a totally uncontrolled environment just what downing a bottle of vodka does to your night. Or not, my roomie tells me he doesn't remember much... whatever... that's life. Might not be the biggest, but it's a social problem if you put your family through a funeral in exchange for your night of liquid "fun".

 

Everyone, Everyone.... i signed up on these forums like 2 minutes ago to get in on this convo. Basically all this talk is useless, we all agree that we will all compromise for some kind of common ground, correct?
well,


why not decriminalize marijuana in the us?, not legalize?!

 

"Alcohal; The Cause and Solution to all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson.

 

Just make it cost more and it will cost the rest of us less in terms of road deaths and related violent assaults. Some of the figures of alcohol related violence are sobering! Also try brewing the alchohol so that there is less alcohol in it (it keeps getting stronger especially wine) and again try to drink it with food as that is how it should be taken and has a less devastating effect on the liver.

Or perhaps we should wonder why people feel the need to drink until they are either raging beasts or comatose......

Pot whilst seeming relatively harmless compared to the demon alcohol and damage the mouth, throat and lungs. Just so long as you know right?

I'm off for a swifty...

 

No…the lack of it is.

 

The abuse of alchohol is the problem, I get drunk a couple of times and I feel like stored feaces the next day, its no even beneficial for anyone's health.

 

When prohibition was ended the use of alcohol skyrocketed, so yes, prohibition did work to a great extent.

"Drugs are just a way of people giving themselves a license to be assholes, and its the same with alcohol." -Frank Zappa

 

The culture is addicted to addiction.

If they gave up alcohol they'd straight away have to look for some other way to drown their sorrows.

 

Yeah, the law-abiding citizens started buying and using it again. THAT'S why it skyrocketed ...not any other reason.

Yeah, it worked alright ...it created the basis for organized crime in the USA and when alcohol was back in use, organized crime groups turned to drugs and guns and....anything else that they could sell. So, yeah, I guess you could say prohibition worked ....if that's how you want to view it.

Baron Max

 

I tend to disagree. Why do you state this? Certainly it is better to have all the old arguments readily available than lost months ago to avoid (at least to some extent) repeating them.

When I have something new to add (usually new fact just read) I tend to dig up an old thread to post it. For example, to at least mention alcohol, I have started several about various aspects of alcohol as liquid fuel and dig one up when there is new information to post. Why is this not the better policy?