Kiluminati1984 wrote: Weed is becoming the new choice for today’s social imbiber, and it’s growing in popularity as alcohol sales crash and burn and more states legalize recreational cannabis.
Cannabis opponents have been wrong before. Now they appear to be wrong again.
Opponents of cannabis legalization were adamant that more legal, available recreational cannabis would lead to more alcohol intoxication…then harder drugs…then to a drug-fueled society out of control.
Cannabis was a gateway to hell.
But guess what? Turns out alcohol as a social lubricant has been losing its appeal as cannabis becomes more of the intoxicant of choice. Alcohol—that substance that could literally kill you in one chug-a-lug sitting, that substance that could get you addicted because somewhere in your brain you needed it, that substance that has a long history of changing people from happy-go-lucky productive citizens into drooling homeless people—has been outed for what it is. Poison. The real gateway drug.
Rising up today is cannabis as the intoxicant of choice, the social lubricant of a new generation. Not addictive (most agree). Not deadly (some disagree-see driving stats, they say). No hangovers (all agree).
Sure, there is hope for the alcoholic. There is Alcoholics Anonymous. And you can overcome your alcohol addiction by following a plan like charting your drinking, or building drink refusal skills using some scripted lines. There are literally hundreds of ways of getting sober. Most caution that even sober, you will always be an addict.
But today’s partier has enough to worry about without adding the stress of overcoming an addiction like with alcohol, an addiction that probably spun out of the use of alcohol at socially approved gatherings, reinforced by a massive alcohol marketing machine that makes you want to slam a beer just about anywhere, anytime, because that’s how you get and keep friends—or impress the opposite sex with you social slurring skills. Or just be the life of the party, as you slowly kill yourself, sip after sip.
Alcohol abuse sloshes on. You probably know the stats but let’s review…
Nearly 70% of adults said that they drank alcohol in the past year; 55% in the last month. Over 14 million U.S. adults suffer from alcohol use disorder, along with over 400,000 youths ages 12 to 17. An estimated 95,0005 people (approximately 68,000 men and 27,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Alcohol misuse costs this country nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year.
So why, WHY jump on that particularly ugly, boozy bad-idea bandwagon when there is cannabis, a sweet yet complicated plant winking to you in the wings at the party stage, ready to give you a buzz maybe reminiscent of an alcohol buzz (beer is made with fermented hops, which is a close plant cousin of cannabis). But so much better for you in so many ways.
Cannabis is not the evil perpetrator of disaster like alcohol.
Cannabis doesn’t own you. It calmly rents your mind, it slyly tweaks your body in a good way. Then it goes away. It still lets you be you during and after you consume.
It’s becoming the new choice for today’s social imbiber, and it’s growing in popularity as alcohol sales crash and burn and more states legalize recreational cannabis. As of November 3, 15 states and the District of Columbia have now either enacted or have voted to enact adult-use legalization laws, while 36 states have either enacted or have voted to enact medical marijuana access laws.
Alcohol Takes Backseat To Cannabis As Intoxicant Of Choice - The Fresh Toast