Alcohol vs weed

[Will Sparks]

Alcohol, much cheaper and easier to get access to.

[Russ]

Yeah I know it's not accurate. But it outlines (or suggests?) how LSD, is not addictive and you cannot 'overdose' on it solely. Alcohol on the other hand can be addictive and you can die from alcohol poisoning.

*twitches*
If it's not accurate, you can't use it to infer anything.

[Drunk]

Y O L O
In all seriousness, depends on your own personal values. As discussed already, both have their risks. Personally, I find it pretty hypocritical for someone to condemn cannabis for being dangerous, but are completely fine with drinking at a party. I wouldn't discriminate between alcohol and cannabis myself, or any other drug honestly - unless you're pledging complete abstinence from these substances, then I don't think it's reasonable for you to condemn any of them. Whether or not you'd try them is another issue.

edit - just realised the irony in my username and this topic

[appianway]

I don't agree with the all or none approach. I have a serious problem with certain drugs because 1) you can't always be sure about their purity or where they came from and 2) it's easier to overdose. I wouldn't even try some of these drugs if they were legalized.

I don't think that pot is as dangerous as alcohol (I've never heard of people passing out from pot and being taken to the emergency room or doing anything too risque while high - most people I know who do pot nap when high). That said, I just really don't like pot - I find the smell absolutely disgusting. I know plenty of people who don't drink because they don't like the taste of alcohol but don't care if others drink and don't have any moral objections - I guess I have a similar objection when it comes to pot.

[Mao]

Yeah I know it's not accurate. But it outlines (or suggests?) how LSD, is not addictive and you cannot 'overdose' on it solely. Alcohol on the other hand can be addictive and you can die from alcohol poisoning.

I don't think you understand how 'not accurate' it is. Each point on that graph comes from as few as 8 surveys, where participants were asked to rank a number of categories on the discrete scale {0,1,2,3}.

The standard 95% confidence interval we use in statistics implies the minimum uncertainty of each data point on that graph is +/- 0.5. If you want to compare anything, you need to draw a square of size 1 around each point. If there is overlap, a comparison cannot be made.

This is the optimistic estimate of uncertainty. If I take a pessimistic estimate of the uncertainty, even the cocaine and LSD points would overlap.

This graph proves nothing. Any claims that it does is a display of total ineptitude in statistics.

[Professor Polonsky]

Wait, are we now suggesting LSD is addictive?

*sigh*

The corporatist brainwash has even hit the intelligentsia now.

[alondouek]

Wait, are we now suggesting LSD is addictive?

*sigh*

The corporatist brainwash has even hit the intelligentsia now.

Where on earth did you pull that from? I'm assuming you're referring to Mao's comment, which is entirely correct in refuting rejectable hypotheses which suffer from obvious and critical statistical misappropriations.

Conjuring irrelevant statements out of thin air and throwing around buzzwords for no apparent reason? How very Socialist Alternative of you.

[brenden]

No one should ever be compared to the SA. EVER. This thread has gone too far.

[Professor Polonsky]

Thank you Brenden

No, alon, I was expressing my frustration with some people's here complete denial of well-grounded facts. If you told a reasonable person that the Earth is round, they wouldn't ask you for a study to prove it. The same goes to something like the potential for dependence on LSD (or rather, lack thereof). And yes, as friedbacon pointed out, the inability to overdose on it. Sure, you can go skeptic about anything and get away with it, but it doesn't make for a very substantive discussion.

And what's unclear about the rest of my statement? Our drug policy (or just about any policy, for that matter, but the former is especially affected by it) is pretty much solely determined by corporate interests. Discussion talking points like "Illegal drug X is yucky!" or "Illegal drug X is dangerous!" while dismissing the far greater danger to society caused by legal drugs (by a good order of magnitude) I'd expect from the easily persuaded, not people here. I understand that you might have evidence to show that certain illicit drugs are dangerous, but I'd refuse to even consider the miniscule damage done by them (to the user, that is - their danger to society is vast, precisely due to them being illegal) until we dispense with the problem that is legal drugs. Anyone doing otherwise is, after all, just playing to the hands of the big corporations.

[no steez]

*twitches*
If it's not accurate, you can't use it to infer anything.

Well I have done research on it, not one single person has died of a recorded LSD overdose, yet countless people have died from alcohol poisoning.

[Mao]

No, alon, I was expressing my frustration with some people's here complete denial of well-grounded facts. If you told a reasonable person that the Earth is round, they wouldn't ask you for a study to prove it. The same goes to something like the potential for dependence on LSD (or rather, lack thereof).

No, if you told a reasonable person that the Earth is round, he would ask you to show him proof, to which you can provide a globe amongst all sorts of other evidence.

Now, to someone who has never consumed drugs before, the dependence of various drugs is not immediately obvious. You have not provided data, you have only provided claims. You cited two references on the previous page, the first of which is a simple opinion piece with no bibliography, the latter is an article that is a good primer on the issue, but doesn't really provide any solid data for your claims.

That's okay, I have found some data for you: http://www.umbrellasociety.ca/web/files/u1/Comp_epidemiology_addiction.pdf

This seems like the only solid piece of statistics done on addictiveness of a wide range of drugs, with a relatively large sample size (n~8000). Every paper that quotes capture ratio figures seems to cite this paper. Keep in mind that the dataset is from 1990-1992 surveys. The question is, do the data justify your claims?

Dependence (%)
Alcohol: 15.4 +/- 0.7
Cannabis: 9.1 +/- 0.7
Psychedelics: 4.9 +/- 0.7
Heroin: 23.1 +/- 5.6
Cocain: 16.7 +/- 1.5

At a glance, it appears they do. But we dig a little deeper:

Dependence:


These are some of the conclusions we can draw:
- cannabis, when consumed by youths, is as addictive as alcohol, and as addictive as cocaine later in life
- psychedelics, when consumed by youths, is as addictive as alcohol later in life

The effect of availability on dependence cannot be deduced from data here, so that is a source of unknown uncertainty for illicit drugs. The data is also 10 years old, and recent trends are not reflected.

From the data above,
- We cannot say cannabis and psychedelics are safer than alcohol by an order of magnitude.
- We are not sure if cannabis and psychedelics are necessarily less addictive than alcohol, at least not at some age groups and definitely not across different age groups.
- The 'facts' about cannabis and psychedelics are not necessarily well-grounded or well-documented. There appears to be very few sources of data available.

The only solid conclusion we can draw, I think, is that cannabis and psychedelics are not more addictive than alcohol, and alcohol isn't more addictive than cocaine and heroin.

[mark_alec]

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030437 - "For example, LSD, which is widely abused, does not appear to be addictive."

[mark_alec]

Also, although http://www.sciencemag.org.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/content/249/4976/1513.full.pdf advocates not legalising drugs, table 1 shows that hallucinogens are considered to have the equal least risk of addiction (level with caffeine).

[Markkiieee]

Ok, so I asked a few of my class mates today which they thought was better, alcohol or weed.

surprisingly (to me), they all said weed was safer and better than getting drunk.

after seeing AN's views and my friend's views, I kinda don't even want to get drunk any more... but weirdly, I really want to try weed now.

[Mao]

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030437 - "For example, LSD, which is widely abused, does not appear to be addictive."

Context:

Drugs of Abuse Yet to Be Classified

There are a number of abused drugs about which there is no clear consensus concerning their addictive properties (e.g., hallucinogens and dissociative anaesthetics). For example, LSD, which is widely abused, does not appear to be addictive. Animals will not self-administer hallucinogens, suggesting that they are not rewarding [44]. Importantly, these drugs fail to evoke dopamine release, further supporting the idea that only drugs that activate the mesolimbic dopamine system are addictive. Instead, the critical action of hallucinogens may be increased glutamate release in the cortex, presumably through a pre-synaptic effect on 5-HT2A receptors expressed on excitatory afferents from the thalamus [45].

The authors are either contradicting themselves in the same paragraph, or LSD only 'appears' to not be addictive but there is no clear consensus.

Also, although http://www.sciencemag.org.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/content/249/4976/1513.full.pdf advocates not legalising drugs, table 1 shows that hallucinogens are considered to have the equal least risk of addiction (level with caffeine).

The rating here is a subjective rating.