I sometimes wonder if we rely too heavily on the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco. People who don't know anything about marijuana (which comprise a substantial portion of our opposition) may have a hard time understanding what we mean by that. Moreover, it's tricky to compare the totality of harm produced by those drugs vs. marijuana because our opponents obscure the analysis by blaming the harms of alcohol and tobacco on their legality.
Inevitably, the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco suffers by virtue of the fact that those drugs are pretty dangerous. Being safer than them doesn’t mean it's safe. So for a while now, I've been trying to think of something else to compare it to and I think Pete Guither nails it in this post.
Inevitably, the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco suffers by virtue of the fact that those drugs are pretty dangerous. Being safer than them doesn’t mean it's safe. So for a while now, I've been trying to think of something else to compare it to and I think Pete Guither nails it in this post.
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The fact that marijuana is
The fact that marijuana is safer than alcohol, and tobacco does not make it safe, but the point of that is the fact that alcohol, and tobacco are legal, so if marijuana is safer than two legal drugs then why is it not legal.
Because. . .
Comparing a relatively benign substance to two known killers is the wrong avenue to take and it isn't helping as the people you are trying to convince probably feel the same way about alcohol and tobacco as they do about any substance used for recreation.
If anything, it's better to point out the societal costs and the infractions of our born freedoms as Americans in any arguments regarding cannabis regulation.
How about safer than Christmas trees?
Christmas tree fires kill an average of one American a year; that's one more than marijuana. Or 100% more than marijuana. The truth is that most illegal drugs aren't dangerous at all; how many people die from using LSD or peyote? Or salvia, for Heaven's sake? Even that demon drug meth only kills users when they're also being Taser'd, beaten or choked while in police custody. And the 1% of non-users who say they would use if drugs were legal hardly accounts for the vast difference in fatality rates of legal drugs vs. illegal.
I think it does convince people
If you tell someone (someone at least relatively reasonable) that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco, that does leave them with something substantial to think about. Maybe they won't totally be convinced, but they'll probably at least reflect on it a little. It's just that there's a lot of people out there who haven't really questioned the law before, so it takes some time for them to reconsider, but i do think it makes people think.
It's not just safer than alcohol it's so much safer than alcohol
that there's utterly no comparison. Alcohol has this relationship to violence (including both violence against fetuses and child molestation) that cannabis just doesn't have! Anyone making the cannabis is safer argument has available the facts they need to bulldoze through the argument that being safer than alcohol and tobacco ain't much of a recommendation.
We need all the arguments working together. In the case of cannabis the extreme problems created at home and abroad by a black market and criminalization of users are only part of what's broken with the law. Arguments of individual liberty are significant when hard drugs are involved, but they should be unassailable when alcohol vs. cannabis are considered. There is just no way alcohol supremacism over cannabis is compatible with liberty and justice for all. It makes a mockery of the most solemn pledge of Americans.
And makes a mockery of government claims to be fighting violence, when it is so energetically promoting violence not only by creating such a vast black market, and creating millions of not particularly employable citizens with "criminal" records, but also by a major league attempt to force people to get high by using only alcohol, which is MUCH less safer than marijuana due to it's tendency to lead to reckless and sadistic violence, and it's status as a toxic substance (fetal alcohol syndrome, overdoses, death from chronic abuse,etc).
Are they trying to stop violence, or trying to cause it?
-newageblues
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