Worrying about teen drinking and drug use has kept many parents up at night. I’m sure most of us have parents who speak about alcohol and drug consumption like it’s the devil’s handiwork. Literally. With marijuana becoming increasingly available and legal in some parts of the world, the question has taken on new urgency: if the youth are going to experiment, which is safer, booze or pot?
“The answer has to be neither”, Dr. Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine says. But then he acknowledges they’re not exactly equivalent; and he considers alcohol more dangerous.
“After going through all the data, and looking at which is more dangerous in almost any metric you would pick ,pot really looks like it’s safer than alcohol, so I guess if I had to choose it’ll be alcohol’ he says.
Though many people associate drugs with crime, most of the criminal activity tied to marijuana has to do with illegal distribution, not violence committed by people who smoke it in other words blame the drug dealers who ride on fast motorbikes with the weird tough guy look. On the other hand, the number of crimes that are committed have some sort of alcohol component related to them are massive. Research also shows rates of interpersonal and domestic violence are actually lower in people who smoke marijuana than people who don’t. Also, alcohol increases the occurrence of unsafe driving, damage to relationships with friends and romantic partners, regret about actions while under the influence of alcohol, especially among females and worst of all, kidney failure. (And before you get a donor here in Ghana, hmm)
Weed, Kush, ganja, Mary Jane, grade (and the other interesting names given to it) is often known as a gateway drug. But did you also know that it has a high chance of causing dependency and drug abuse? Well yes, it does. So, there you have it. In my opinion, both substances are quite harmful to the human body but alcohol is the main wreck!
