Since alcohol kills more people than weed, what makes drinking alcholol acceptable everywhere but smoking weed frowned upon and/or illegal in some states?

Since alcohol kills more people than weed, what makes drinking alcholol acceptable everywhere but smoking weed frowned upon and/or illegal in some states?

What do you think?

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  3. Alcohol is uniquely both a social lubricant and social glue. In Czechia, we like our beer. We like to go and have one. I am an accountant. I used to frequent this really sleazy pub and we sat there. Who sat with me? A truck driver (specifically one driving garbage truck), chief surgeon of a nearby hospital, city quarter mayor, a grandpa, former soldier and a prostitute, not currently with a client. We’d talk about all kinds of stuff, half-liter of beer in hand. This is unique to us Czechs. When it comes to pub, there is no class/wealth distance between us and thus, animosity between the rich and poor is not as big of an issue, as is in the US for instance. Precisely because we meet in pubs for a beer. When was the last time, you’ve met a senator face to face? Well during presidency of Václav Havel, you could literally sit down with the president and his bodyguard at one table, no matter your social standing. Even if you were the toilet lady, you’d still be able to have a respectful discussion with the head of state.

  4. Because what drugs are restricted has nothing to do with how dangerous they are. There are other reasons.

    Specifically, racism. People associated certain drugs with certain races, and banned those drugs in an attempt to reduce how many of those people lived here.

    This strategy did not work because the premise behind it was fundamentally flawed. But we keep the laws anyway for reasons which are not entirely clear.

  5. Not at all likely to be the real answer, but personally, the smell.

    *Casual* alcohol consumption is a pretty contained event. Either in the comfort of your own home with no impact thereafter, or as part of specific activities, parties, bar, a night out, etc… It’s required that somebody take it too far to be noticed in the first place, casual use is invisible.

    Weed *can be* the same if you’re careful about where and when you consume it, but it fucking stinks, and when you don’t contain that stink, everybody in your vicinity (and most annoyingly, neighbouring apartments) is subjected to it. The bar for bothering others is much higher with alcohol, a casual drink in the evening won’t bother anybody, while a smoke even in relative privacy sure as hell can.

  8. Laws do not need a rational or coherent reason to be passed – they just need to be passed.

    Alcohol was legal in the US for a long time because it was just a normal thing people drank, then it was briefly illegal because some people shouted and campaigned for it to become illegal, then it was made legal again.

    Marijuana was made illegal because hemp production would have threatened the money that some 1%ers had invested into paper pulp, so they had laws passed to make it illegal. Then that law was briefly overturned, only for Nixon to make marijuana illegal again so that he had an excuse to arrest hippies.

  15. Weed is seen as a drug and alcohol is not seen as a drug. Weed has never been fully regulated and had to be sold illegally for a very long time and alcohol has mostly been legal ( save, obviously, for prohibition era) and alcohol has a social lubrication effect that weed doesn’t tend to have.

    Alcohol in small amounts isn’t exactly good for you, but it is a good social lubricant. Studies show that no amount of alcohol is *good* for you, but small amounts of alcohol aren’t particularly *bad* for you.

    There are a lot of people who don’t drink much, but they really do need that beer or that glass of wine to feel relaxed and to engage socially.

    It’s a lot like cigarettes or something- we’re social creatures, we’re habit forming creatures, we’re ritualistic creatures, we’re self-conscious creatures, etc. and so for whatever, humans have found that doing mind altering substances together creates a comfortable bond and openness to experience that we lack when we’re completely sober.

    It means that most people do not abuse alcohol. Most people have 1-2 drinks or a very occasional, very heavy night of drinking might be 4 drinks over a very long period of say, 6 hours or more (like the party/barbecue starts at 5 PM, you’re having your first drink by 5:30, you have one drink every 75 minutes and by 11 PM you’ve had 4 drinks and you cut yourself off to get ready to sober up and drive home or just go home with someone else who hasn’t had anything to drink or cut themselves off after 1 or 2 many hours ago) and in doing so, we socially lubricate.

    It’s very obvious in most settings that people relax and open up and engage more with a little booze in their system and that by keeping that moderate level of alcohol in you it keeps that party going and that’s why we drink socially.

    Alcoholism, heavy drinking, drinking to the point of really damaging yourself, is usually a more private experience and problem.

    A lot of people who publicly are neutral or anti-weed smoke weed in private or have no problem with people smoking weed in private.

    In fact, most people are less judgmental if an otherwise functional, moderately sociable person smokes weed by themselves in their private time than they are of people who drink by themselves.

    Etc.

  17. the illegalisation of weed legitimately is rooted almost entirely in racism, smoked and grown by mexicans in the early 1900s, general contemporary populace is told that it makes them go fucking feral and want to eat white babies and shit. insane, everything is to he enjoyed in moderation though, don’t go insane on the weed

  25. Don’t listen to Reddit.

    1. Alcohol is already legal and it’s difficult to ban it. Remember prohibition?
    2. It would be better (more effective) to restrict alcohol by age, and restrict it in other ways, than an outright ban. You see countries doing this with cigarettes.
    3. When someone does alcohol, you don’t need to breathe it in and it doesn’t seep into the wallpaper, carpets, fixtures and fittings.

  29. Popular belief and people being to stupid to think for them selfs, so whatever anyone says online becomes true, and because most people these days have anxiety and/or depression alot of people want to fit in more making this the case even more these days.

  34. Tradition. Or habitual. Look into the history of why mj is illegal. A paper baron wanted to insure his forests would be what people used to make newpapers. Instead of hemp. And it just snowballed from there because of lack of science, and another way to persecute people of color.

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