Comment by bcjdjsndon
11 hours ago
Alcohol costs the UK 4-5x more than smoking. Coincidentally, it's the upper classes drug of choice. Must be a coincidence though
11 hours ago
Alcohol costs the UK 4-5x more than smoking. Coincidentally, it's the upper classes drug of choice. Must be a coincidence though
I’d say cocaine is the upper class drug of choice. Regardless, alcohol is every classes drug of choice. The debate over whether the government is hypocritical or not kind of ignores the reality that British voters don’t want alcohol banned. So the government isn’t going to ban it. Which is broadly what you’d want a government to do!
As the US found out, alcohol is very very hard to ban because it is very very easy to make.
Weed and tobacco are also very easy to make. They literally grow on trees[1].
[1] Technically, herbaceous plants.
Really in the case of tobacco, (almost) no one is going to grow it. It's a massive pain in the ass when most people are addicted to the nicotine. Synthetic nicotine in vapes are what would be black marketed these days.
Weed and tobacco smoking are also easy to detect by people who don't want secondhand smoke. And if it were illegal, they could report it.
At least alcohol produces side effects that people enjoy. Smoking pretty much only has negative side effects once you get hooked.
Have you ever smoked? I feel like I only hear this sentiment from people that have never tried nicotine.
Nicotine absolutely produces effects that people enjoy. Smokers don't just do it because they want to smell bad and look cool.
Is there proof that the positive effects are still there after you're hooked? Or are the "positive effects" at that point just a cessation of the negative effects of withdrawal?
1 reply →
Alcohol is the deadliest and has the biggest social costs of any drug. Nicotine is second, heroin is a distant third.
Drugs that are largely harmless, like MDMA, are illegal with heavy penalties.
Drug policy is largely nonsense and rampantly hypocritical.
MDMA is a lot more acutely dangerous than nicotine, and somewhat moreso than alcohol. If you drink too much, you'll vomit, and for the most part be fine. Obviously that not always true (I'm sure everyone knows at least one person who had to have their stomach pumped in college), but for the vast majority of users, their body's natural defense against being poisoned works fine.
An MDMA overdose, however, needs active, external cooling to ride out. We don't really have a natural safety valve for overconsumption.
That's not to say it should remain banned (I'm quite pro-legalization myself), but it's not entirely arbitrary to have MDMA banned versus other, less acutely dangerous drugs. Better examples of unjustifiably banned drugs are psychedelics such as LSD.
Sitting in a room with someone drinking doesn't give you cancer.
Just ban smoking indoors then
It gives you cancer outdoors too!