We are chasing the wrong thing.
The covid era has seen a sharp uptick in many things. One of them has been alcohol use and with it, all of the accompanying consequences. In an average year, alcohol claims 80k American souls. More than likely, that’s vastly under reported. While the numbers aren’t fully known, it’s looking like 100k deaths during the covid era due to increased use of alcohol. It’s worth noting that cannabis deaths held steady at zero, yes, zero. There are likely some drug warriors out there who will dispute the zero death claim and cite anecdotal examples of someone falling off a balcony while using cannabis but that’s not really the same thing. While not without risk, cannabis is safer than alcohol and not just due to the impact of ingestion. Alcohol is pretty toxic, it also bursts into a flame, should we drink it?
We hear “don’t drink and drive” very often in American culture. Sure, that’s sound advice on which we can all agree. It’s just incomplete, there are so many other things that go wrong when people use alcohol. Everything gets worse when one pours alcohol on it. Fights, violence between partners, sexual assault, ER visits and on and on. Cannabis use sees a fraction of that if any at all. Think of it like this:
“Four drunk boys will start a fight, four stoned boys will start a band” and yes, no intoxication is also an option but since people are people, we need to be realistic and offer safer roads, especially to young people. We’re chasing the wrong thing, alcohol should be harder to access and cannabis more readily available.
Alcohol should have warning labels; “causes stupidity in young men under 30” would be a prudent warning. A picture of a diseased liver on the bottle would work too. A huge swath of the problems that come with inebriation can be solved by replacing alcohol with cannabis. So what’s with products like the one pictured here? Do we really need small packaging, easily concealed and all set up for a car ride home? Do we need it to be on sale and in a bin next to the chips at a grocery store? If one can buy a toxic substance that causes so much damage to families and the community, at the very least, one should be able to access a safer substance with the same barriers. If people are offered a safer choice, some with take it. We should give them the freedom to choose.