Pot vs. Alcohol

Alcohol vs Pot.
A friend of mine and I tend to argue a lot. We're still great friends we just have lots of open discussions. Yesterday's topic was on Alcohol vs Marijuana. I happen to smoke it for reasons (don't judge me, I don't judge you lolli loving hentai fan's).

Anyways he got mad at me cause he doesn't like the fact that I smoke pot and I told him.
"There's plenty of worse things I could be abusing so calm down".
And he said,
"It's no better than you going and getting shit faced at a bar".

And that eventually led to many other discussions like which is worse for you, and why pot is illegal when alcohol's done worse things to society than pot.

So after reading all that...
1. Your views on weed?
2. Which do you think is truly worse (not just for a single person but society as a whole).
3. Legalized or not?


My opinion:
1. Weed isn't something I go boasting about and think that I'm gaining some sort of standard of "cool" or social importance by doing it. I do it for personal reasons and pleasure nothing more or less.

2. My opinion? Alcohol. The U.S. Government spends millions of dollars every year keeping pot heads in jail for doing something that (in my opinion) is less harmful to you than another substance which happens to be legal and abused all the time.

3. I don't really care. I find it a weird thought of being able to pick up a joint on the way home from work at your local Wal-Greens.

1. I value my mind and Reason far too much to risk losing any control of the two; and I detest the argument that you can't judge it until you've tried it.
2. Medically, I believe it has been shown the alcohol is far worse. It is a literal poison, which is why it can damage the liver as such. However, alcohol has a history far to deep to allow it to be abolished- exhibit A: Prohibition. All weed has going for it is medicinal properties, and even that is BS. Heroin was prescribed as frequently as weed by licensed doctors like 50 years ago, but we found alternatives. Why the hell is it taking so long to find an alternative to weed?
3. Don't, not even medicinal. Like I said, fund research to find an alternative.

1. Your views on weed?

I, personally, don't like it. I've been around people that have used it, and what it does to them, and have been turned off to it ever since. It is (currently) an illegal drug here in the US (unless for medical purposes), and I think it's for a good damn reason.

2. Which do you think is truly worse (not just for a single person but society as a whole).

Honestly, both are bad. Drugs and Alcohol are both something the body should not ingest. Again, I've seen what both can do to people, and none of it is good, except maybe forgetting what happened the day before.

3. Legalized or not?

Alcohol is legal already, duh. :P

Pot, however, is not, and I think it's for a good reason. I don't want some stoner around me, high, causing problems and the like. Now, if they're in their own house, destroying doing things, fine, but get that shit away from me. I don't want to know what the hell you do in your garage at 1 AM in the morning.

Sorry, but that's just a horrible argument. It is more likely a drunk person than a stoned person to be causing problems. Stoners usually just sit back somewhere and relax. Honestly, when you're stoned, that's the only thing you WANT to do. Drunks usually wander the street where the end up in getting run over or do something stupid that will endanger themselves or somebody else.

Drinking and driving? Bar fights? All of those are problems associated with alcohol. I've never seen a stoner fight. It's not to say that driving while high isn't a problem. It is, and there have been accidents due to it. But statistically, alcohol is the leading cause in any car accident due to impaired driving.

There are actually more reasons against alcohol than marijuana. Alcohol does pretty much nothing but poison your body. At least marijuana can be used as a pain-killer.


I would say to leave marijuana illegal as it is. This way, people will be forced to do it somewhere they can't be seen to do it. Less chance of them causing trouble.

Loller here makes a good point.

Go on gentlemen, I bet this thread will become oh so amusing.

1. Your views on weed?

Personally I've go a kinda double view on weed. I really don't find smoking weed that much of a big deal, but at the same time I can see why a drug so unsafe as marijuana is illegal, and here I mean the fact that the substances that causes psychoses can stay in your system, causing psychoses at any time. I have know people who have been going in and out of this shit for years, and so I am quite put off. But at the same time I feel that if you don't use it daily, or even weekly, it's ok.

2. Which do you think is truly worse (not just for a single person but society as a whole).

I think that alcohol is worse, since it's more of a poison, and you can actually overdose it but you can't overdose marijuana this way alcohol is physically more dangerous that weed. As for society they're pretty much the same. The argument that all you wanna do when high is to kick back and relax is quite wrong, that's what you wanna do when the buzz is starting to clear. I've been quite hyped when I've smoked. And ofc this probably changes from person to person.

3. Legalized or not?
I'd say keep marijuana illegal, or legalize it to a point where you can still have it under control. Like that it's only legal to sell/buy and smoke in coffee-shops. And not allowing people to buy large quantities.

Sorry, but I don't feel like doing the question thing. I'll just post my thoughts as paragraphs.

I don't like weed. It's a personal thing, not based on any scientific evidence or anything like that, but on what has happened to people I know and care about as a result of smoking pot. I don't want to be around weed at all, though I don't have problems with people who smoke weed, as long as they don't smoke it when I'm around.

That said, weed is safer than alcohol. It causes far less damage to your body, even if you smoke twelve blunts a day, and the chances of you wrecking your car while high on weed is significantly less than if you are drunk. (Not to say that it's perfectly safe to drive while high; it's not.)

I don't like the idea of weed being legal, because of my personal feelings, but if it was legalized for general use, as long as my friends and family didn't start sparking up fatties around me, I wouldn't care too much. But I disagree with what most potheads say. I don't think legalizing weed would save the economy or make everybody rich or decrease crime by 90%. Legalizing weed wouldn't make the world a happy, sunshiney place where nothing can go wrong. Not by a long shot.

Concerning the weed versus alcohol debate, I actually side with alcohol. I would rather have alcohol be legal than weed. Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, but I've never met a person that only smoked weed on special occasions or once a week. With alcohol (as long as you're not an alcoholic), it seems that you can enjoy it without being addicted to it, but with weed, it seems that you can only be addicted to it, just like with cigarettes. Also, people seem to know when to drink booze. They typically wait until nightfall and the weekend. I've never seen any restrain when it comes to weed. Every smoker I've known has smoked it whenever possible. Before school/work, during school/work (if possible), and then after school/work, and once or twice again before going to sleep! They smoke more often than I eat. I'm not saying that every person who smokes weed is like that, just like I'm not saying that every person that drinks does so responsibly. Just saying that it seems that the majority of drinkers drink responsibly, and the majority of smokers smoke all the time, regardless of the situation. In short, I guess I'm saying that I'd trust someone who gets incredibly drunk every weekend to do his job better than someone who gets high every three hours, and that's why I'd prefer alcohol to be legal than pot.

So many deaths a year occur due to alcohol, be it directly through poisoning or indirectly through the person himself...
That's all i have to say.
Not in a talkative mood.

Alcohol's here to stay, don't question it. And I personally enjoy a good-tasting beer compared to getting high.

As for weed, I seriously don't see why we need it, nor do I find a pressing need to legalize it. If I wanted an anesthetic, I'd take the medical stuff over some marijuana. While it's true that weed is safer than getting intoxicated, like all drugs, it does have negative impacts on the body over prolonged usage, and can potentially lead into more dangerous drugs. Alcohol is nowhere as addicting compared to weed, which is another side to drugs like weed.

Right, since I am pretty tired, I'll just go by the questions:
1) My view on weed.
It exists. By that I mean that if someone smokes weed or a grain of rice is harvested in Japan / China, it is about the same to me.
2) Weed vs Alcohol:
I think that alcohol is something with a tradition, just like smoking pipe / cigars. Another point about alcohol is that you can use it in food without intoxicating yourself. I will refrain from listing the countless sauces, sweets etc that are created with alcohol in it, so I'll just focus on the consuming of alcohol as a drink. There are 2 kinds of consuming alcohol. One is for the taste, (yes a very good wine / champagne) is very good in my opinion and adding alcohol to a hot drink is nice aswell. The people that use alcohol in that way are those who I'd call responsible users, that don't go intoxicating their system over the top.

On the other hand, consuming weed is, as far as I know, neither a tradition, neither do you use it in a large variety of foods, as far as I am informed, once you consume it, you are on a rather high level of being affected by it already (in general). Now if you are just looking for ways to calm down, there are many other ways to do it already (except for very very few medical purposes).
Bottom Line: In my opinion, having alcohol legalized and weed considered illegal is perfectly fine the way it is at the moment. Neither should alcohol be banned, nor should weed be unbanned.

...You're joking, right? There is no physical addiction with marijuana, the same of which can not be said for alcohol.

@TMS: Huh, according to research, Marijuana is less addicting than alcohol - interesting. So technically, it's less harmful and less addicting than alcohol.

However, while marijuana might not be as addictive as other drugs, it still is a drug, and it still has the ability to addict others. Marijuana has no physical addiction? What? Give me evidence to prove me otherwise and then I'll consider your argument.

The part of marijuana causing no physical addiction is true, there is no substances that the body will crave for when it gets used to it, in comparison to alcohol or nicotine. And so if you stop smoking weed you won't go into physical withdrawal. BUT marijuana causes something that is called psychological addiction instead, something that can often be worse than physical addiction since the body will never tell you when it's satisfied.

Well I can't recognize your agrument by replying saying that it's still a drug that can make other addicted.
1. Weed has no physical addictions its been proven nothing in it makes it addicting in any way. It's all on the user's shoulders.
2. Physical side effcts? Well the only one that I have ever encountered is my lungs and thats just because I've smoked for such a long time. Don't use that against the drug because something as simple as using sugar or salt too much over a period of time has serious physical health effects. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. So again it's all on the user's shoulders.
3. You do realize that sugar is a drug too? One which is addictive and is mass produced all over the world. Don't just say it's a drug and then leave it at that, give more of an argument than that and i'll recognize your debate.


Now on to the rest of the replies to my thread.

-Beer is equivalence to swag. (a type of weed, cheap, and not very great in aspects of getting you the altered state you gain with other weeds but still enjoyable.)

-Now the reason alcohol has responsible drinkers is due to it being legal for so long it's just become naturally built into society that it's alright to have a beer every now and then. Which is why time has given the substance the opportunity to gain the responsible users.

-At that comment about pot smokers smoking constantly and whenever they can. I disagree. I smoke it maybe once - three times over a period of one to two weeks. It usually varies from the stresses I have in my day to day life. And don't tell me that there are better alternatives than using weed to help relieve anxiety because if your going to preach that than your being a hypocrite. Cigarettes are worse, more addictive, and literally nothing but poisons but it's only legalized for taxes and the government. Nothing more or less.

-And for the comments that were claiming weed is addicting. It is actually the opposite of addictive, it's like eating a favorite food, you enjoy it and do it constantly but you can easily stop and eat other foods. I stopped smoking weed on the spot for a year just to prove a point and I didn't have any problems. Also the reason why most of you are thinking weed does horrible things to people is just because of the natural view society has on something. It's making your arguments biast. Weed has been proven to not have any physical effects or physical damage and as for mental side effects all your really doing is killing braincells. And I hope you all realize that you lose braincells by head banging, jumping, falling, etc. I've been an active user for well over 8 year's and have not found myself any stupider nor needing weed mentally as an addiction.

-I do agree with the comment that said weed is a gateway drug to worse drugs to a certain extent. That's true in a certain sense because while buying weed I have been offered alternatives when the people I know have ran out of it but I refused. The reason it's a gateway is because it's illegal that would change if it were legal. It's like comparing stealing 5 dollars from your mom's wallet as a kid and taking it to the next level by robbing a bank or a store. Illegal things obviously and always lead to worse things.

This argument was mostly from personal experience, rather than "facts". Should I be wrong, sorry. Like I said, it's from personal experience.

However, fun facts:



Marijuana, to me, is by no means "safer" than alcohol.

Edit: Also, Alcohol can also be considered a pain killer. It's known to dull pain.

@ Alex~Kun



1. That anxiety attack is a load of bull. Weed should not be mistaken for shrooms, acid, and other drugs which alter reality. You don't "lose control" you don't even really feel high all you do is feel calmed, relaxed, and pain free. It doesn't make you see demons and wavy walls.

2. You do realize that talking/texting on your phone effects your driving too right? There are plenty of things that cause people to crash. Although I don't agree with driving while baked but it's all on the person who's using the substance. When was the last time you heard of a family of 5 being killed by a stoned driver?

3. Well that may true, it's still the all according to how strong of the substance your taking. There are weaker types of weed like swag which would be the same as drinking a beer. Now you can smoke some AK, Skunk, or Cronic and those could be compared to Bacardi, Jack Daniels, and Captain Morgan.

4. Young people who heavily drink alcohol at a young age are likely to have a destroyed liver before age 30. What's the difference?

The problem about banning alcohol is quite simple actually. You use alcohol in way too many things. Now I don't know the culinary tastes of the average person in the state too much but in Germany, most sauces you are handing out together with meat are including red / white wine - there are many pizzerias that are using beer in the dough and - incase you didn't guess it already: They do NOT affect your body in any poisonous ways as the alcohol is being evaporated due to the temperatures - the only thing that remains is the taste.

Another point is that you usually don't smoke weed while eating a good dish, however the taste of a good red whine goes perfectly well along to a fine gyros or goulash, just as white wine is recommended if you eat fish.

The main problem about alcohol is that people are using it in a lot of stupid ways, but it could be monitored relatively easy - if the shopkeepers etc would actually do it.
I look upon the problem from this angle: If weed would be legalized aswell, it would only add fuel to the fire. Because not only would "aware" consumers make use it of it, but god knows how many retarded people that look upon it as an alternative to alcohol and nicotine to ruin themselves.

Again your argument is biased due to society growing used to the idea that alcohol isn't a bad thing and that it's alright to use it. And of course you can use it in many other applications and it wont effect you but that's no better than trying to justify weed by saying it's needed for medical usage when in reality it's not the best pain reliever.

You could also monitor weed in a very simple way as well to be honest. Plus I have to disagree with that comment about smoking a joint and not enjoying a good meal. When your baked you want to do many things the main things are:

-Sleep
-Eat
-Laugh

When I'm stoned a hamburger suddenly becomes the tastiest meal I've ever had over some high priced steak with an expensive wine.

I do agree with your last point though. I'm half and half on legalizing it. I know a lot of idiot's would just abuse it to further mess their lives and others lives up. I just think it's dumb for the U.S. government to be wasting millions of dollars on maintaining jail cells with pot heads when they should be used for the serious law breakers. The millions wasted in that could easily be funded into something way more useful like fixing poverty, medical advancement, education, etc.

I'm not going to say either one is worse than the other as it conflicts with my personal beliefs. It's your body and as long as you are not a danger to others then you should be allowed to do it.

Weed should be legalized, taxed and regulated in a manner similar to both cigarettes and alcohol. Make the purchasing age 18 or 21 and make it illegal to drive while high in the same manner as drunk driving.

As for the hallucination I had of Gibbous making a post that I agreed with 100%.

Make drugs legal and kick all users off the government dole. All people receiving benefits must undergo weekly tests to prove that they are clean. If caught while receiving benefits then you lose them, permanently.

If your caught D.U.I. then you lose your, license and car. Spend a little time in jail, pay a large amount of fines. Not to mention you are prevented from acquiring jobless benefits & welfare.