Alcohol Defeats Marijuana Again (Sigh)

The following is from an article published on November 1, 2010:

"London, England (CNN) -- Alcohol ranks "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs -- beating out crack and heroin -- according to study results released by a British medical journal, The Lancet. A panel of experts weighed the physical, psychological and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall. Using a new scale to evaluate harms to individual users and others, alcohol received a score of 72 on a scale of 1 to 100, the study says. That makes it almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco, according to the article."

I bring this up as a precursor to one of my bigger disappointments from Election 2010. While some good things happened, such as Iowa replacing its pitiful governor, at least two states failed in attempts to pass laws that would have eased restrictions on marijuana use. South Dakota rejected medicinal marijuana (they obviously didn't pass along enough copies of my blog post on the topic at http://streffblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/medicine-and-marijuana.html), and California rejected a proposal that would have essentially decriminalized (at the state level) possession of very small amounts of MJ.

So to recap, people continue to use -and via advertising are encouraged to use - alcohol, but are severly restricted from not only using, but just possessing MJ. This is despite the fact that alcohol is just as addicting and mind altering, and based on the story above, far more harmful. (There was no mention in the article where exactly marijuana placed on the list of harmful drugs, but it obviously was less so than alcohol.)

Who knew it would be this difficult, well into the 21st century, to get Americans to understand how screwed up they are when it comes to using alcohol versus MJ. We have once again proven that we are, hands down, the most repressed free society in the world.