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Researchers: Alcohol Health Risks Underestimated, Marijuana Relatively Safe
schwit1 writes Compared to other recreational drugs — including alcohol — marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance (abstract), followed by heroin and cocaine.
US soldiers are dying in the ongoing and perpetual Afghan Opium War to bring the finest kind to Russia/Europe/America. As the graph shows they were entirely successful. Here Bush's *Mission* was definitely accomplished, in spades! I don't know whether prohibition or legalization leads to more profit in these times. Prohibition definitely *creates jobs*. So the incentive to abolish it remains diminished.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
True, but the number of deaths for doing something stupid while on LSD is another matter. With it, and other substances, you need to take into account the actions people take while their behavior is modified. It does make it a complete mess to try and scientifically track the adverse effects of these substances.
At this point, I see making these substances illegal, all of them, is causing more problems than they solve. It's time to make drugs legal and create a (sub)-Department of Harmful Recreation Substances to track quality, adverse reactions and to make sure the public is properly informed on the actual effects of all these substances. It would save an incredible amount of money, $225 billion in anti-drug enforcement in the U.S. alone and create new revenue to deal with the problems caused by people being stupid. People try to say that drugs would be even more available but, you can go less than a mile in almost every town in the U.S. and purchase any drug you wish. Criminalizing it is not keeping it off the street and it never will. It would save lives by minimizing health issues from inconsistent dosing, poor to no quality control and lack of reliable information of these substances to say nothing of the current arms race between the new designer drugs that have never been tested and the DEA.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Indeed. There are quite a few older heroin addicts that are productive member of society. They tend to have money and education, as the unregulated market is the main risk. These results just show that the "War on Drugs" is not something rational and does untold harm.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.