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| quote: | Originally posted by Dj Smitty20
Of course it's a drug. It alters your mental and physical state in the same way that other illegal drugs do, although the effects are different. Alcohol is a depressant and the only reason that it's legal is that it's been around for centuries. Look what happened when they tried to ban it in North America in the 1920s (Canada too).
I think people who drink booze but look down on other drugs based on that fact that one is legal and others are not are a bit hypocritical. Perhaps alcohol is safer to some degree but people overdose on booze all the time; we just don't hear about it as often as you would when somebody OD"s on E, coke, heroin, etc. |
+1
A lot of people wrongly assume that there must be scentifically-based reasons for the distinction between licit and illicit drugs as a criminology student I can say that this belief is completely unfounded and the proposition it expresses is wholly false.
Opium, for instance, was criminalized in the beginning of the 20th century in an attempt by the Canadian government to discourage Asian immigration into the country. Cannabis, as another example, was criminalzed without much reason: in fact, in the 1930s when the issue of marijuana became more hotly debated, a significant amount of politicians did not even realize that the drug was illegal. Ecstasy, yet another example, was criminalized in the states a few decades ago not after clinical research had demonstrated its potential harms, but after the drug had spread to mainstream culture and was being used recreationally in night clubs.
Everybody knows the statistics concerning the amount of deaths that alcohol causes each year versus other drugs.
Furthermore, prescription medication can be extremely dangerous: research on drugs like Paxil will demonstrate this point.
Keep in mind, it is not a coincident that Big Pharma has been unable to patent a (real) cannabis drug: THC is from a plant and organic things cannot be patented--otherwise, cannabis would definitely have been the product of Pharma by now.
The world we live in eh?!
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