Thoughts from the void: Cannabis and Alcohol

'On the basis of data from 17 countries, it is estimated that 37 per cent of homicide perpetrators were under the influence of a psychoactive substance when committing the homicide, and the vast majority tended to be under the influence of alcohol. This finding coincides with a meta-analysis of 23 independent studies, which found that on average 37 per cent of homicide offenders were under the influence of alcohol when they committed the offence. In the psychopharmacological model, the finding that the role of alcohol in homicide is more important than that of drugs is mostly attributed to the more widespread use of alcohol, which can also occur in concomitance with the use of drugs. The existing body of research points to a positive but not necessarily causal relationship between alcohol use and violence. Some studies analysing drug consumption among inmates found that violent offenders were more likely than non-violent offenders to have consumed alcohol at the time of the offence'

- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,

'Investigators reported, “The results show that the majority of U.S. consumers perceive cannabis (as CBD, hemp, marijuana, and THC) as having medical uses and view the potential for abuse of cannabis as less than for commonly prescribed medications and alcohol.”

Under federal law, the cannabis plant is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance with “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted use in treatment in the United States.” By contrast, alcohol is not scheduled within the US Controlled Substances Act. Cocaine and methamphetamine are classified under the law as Schedule II substances.'

- NORML

"I believe that the habit of using ganja moderately is absolutely harmless; but I think even the moderate use of alcohol is liable to produce tissue changes in the long run. Further, I here refer entirely to the native community; and it is my observation that when a native takes to alcohol, it is extremely difficult for him to remain moderate; and in life assurance work, of which I have a good deal, I always advise an extra premium in the case of any native who indulges in alcohol even in the most moderate way, and utterly refuse to accept a native life if there is evidence of the consumption of alcohol to any considerable extent which would still be considered moderate in the case of Europeans. My experience leads me to hold the same views of the effects of alcohol on the lower classes. A native who takes to liquor is lost. As regards the excessive use, I would still place alcohol first. I regard it as most deleterious."

- Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Crombie, appearing before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-95

"As to the evil sequelæ so unanimously dwelt on by all writers, these did not appear to us so numerous, so immediate, or so formidable as many which may be clearly traced to over-indulgence in other powerful stimulants or narcotics, viz., alcohol, opium, or tobacco."

- William O'Shaugnessey

One is a known neurotoxin with highly addictive properties. Its consumption is known to severely damage the brain, nervous system, heart, liver, kidneys and muscular coordination. It is known to cause aggression and has been associated with numerous violent crimes, sexual crimes and domestic violence. Annual deaths from it range in the millions worldwide (3 million deaths annually as per WHO). People addicted to it end up as homeless, financial wrecks, with their bodies and minds broken and many do not make it through addiction. It is a known carcinogen, believed to cause multiple types of cancer. It is said to contribute to dementia. It has been acknowledged as a cause for insanity over a number of centuries. It is is said to have an effective dosage to lethal dosage ratio of 1:6-10, i.e. the amount that is commonly consumed on average to feel its effects to the amount if consumed that can kill a person of .

The other is known for its neuro-protective, anxiolytic, analgesic, anti-depressant, relaxant, anti-carcinogenic properties. It is known to address more than two dozen illnesses and medical conditions. It is known for its calming effects. It has a very safe dosage profile. It is is said to have an effective dosage to lethal dosage ratio of of 1:40000, i.e. the amount that is commonly consumed on average to feel its effects to the amount if consumed that can kill a person. Basically, dying of an overdose on it is virtually impossible. It is known to be one of the world's earliest recreational drugs and has been used worldwide from time immemorial. No known deaths have been directly attributed to its consumption.

The former is alcohol and the latter is cannabis.

The former is legally and freely available all over the world, except in a very few places where it is prohibited. The latter is prohibited worldwide, except in a few places where it is now allowed. The illegal status of cannabis today is the result of lobbying worldwide by the powerful alcohol industry, which views it as a traditional threat. The worldwide alcohol lobby is extremely powerful, with huge financial and political clout. In fact, the prohibition of cannabis, which started in British colonies like India, Burma, or today's Myanmar, Trinidad, Greece and Egypt in the mid 19th century, along with the advent of western alcohol in these places, took wings in Canada and the US in the 1930s (through the Marihuana Act of 1937), and gave the alcohol industry, coming out of prohibition in the US in the 1930s, a significant leg up.

LAWeekly reports that - 'Nearly 70% of adults said that they drank alcohol in the past year; 55% in the last month. Over 14 million U.S. adults suffer from alcohol use disorder, along with over 400,000 youths ages 12 to 17. An estimated 95,0005 people (approximately 68,000 men and 27,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Alcohol misuse costs this country nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year.'

The link between alcohol and violence is unmistakable. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, says that 'The limited data at the global level show that intoxication may be a significant factor in homicide. However, alcohol seems to play a larger role in violence than do drugs.' William S Burroughs, writes in his book Junk about his alcohol experiences, saying 'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' Hunter S. Thompson, in his Interdicted Dispatch from the Global Affairs Desk, May 22, 1975, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, writes about the essential difference between alcohol drinkers and the users of other drugs - 'The Continental, for instance, is considered to be full of "pinkos and dope fiends" by the "old Asia hands" across the square in the Caravelle, where the political style is more hawkish and the vice style tends more to booze and brawling. Last night in the Caravelle bar, an argument between some British correspondents and a group of pilots from the Flying Tiger airlines erupted into violence and serious beating for one of the Britishers...while the only casualties in the Continental last night occurred in a room just up the wide spiral staircase from mine, where a half-dozen American journalists were brought to their knees by a combination of opium, Pernod, and brutal Cambodian grass.' In another place in his book, Junk, William S Burroughs writes 'Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober.' This myth that cannabis causes crime was proven wrong in the 19th century itself by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895. In its summary, the Commission writes that - 'In regard to the moral effects of the drugs, the Commission are of opinion that their moderate use produces no moral injury whatever. There is no adequate ground for believing that it injuriously affects the character of the consumer. Excessive consumption, on the other hand, both indicates and intensifies moral weakness or depravity. Manifest excess leads directly to loss of selfrespect, and thus to moral degradation. In respect to his relations with society, however, even the excessive consumer of hemp drugs is ordinarily inoffensive. His excesses may indeed bring him to degraded poverty which may lead him to dishonest practices; and occasionally, but apparently very rarely indeed, excessive indulgence in hemp drugs may lead to violent crime. But for all practical purposes it may be laid down that there is little or no connection between the use of hemp drugs and crime.'

Not only has alcohol been implicated in a vast majority of cases of domestic violence, besides violent homicide, it has been found that even victims of domestic violence have a greater propensity to abuse alcohol, possibly in order to deal with the associated fear, depression and trauma. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, states that - 'The association between domestic violence, including male perpetrated intimate partner violence against women, and psychoactive substance use has been investigated extensively. While it is not possible to ascertain a causal relationship between these phenomena, evidence shows that women who were injured by a male intimate partner are two to three times more likely to abuse alcohol and to have used cocaine than those who were not injured

It has often been stated that cannabis is a gateway drug that leads a person to other more dangerous drugs. Nobody even considers alcohol to be a gateway drug, with its use projected in society as a normal, even desirable thing to do. The Future of Freedom Foundation reports that 'And third, if you are looking for a gateway drug, then the real gateway drug is alcohol (ethanol — the active ingredient in all beers, wines, and distilled spirits). What person who ever smoked pot, snorted cocaine, injected heroin, or popped ecstasy pills did not go down the long and winding road to being a drug addict without first getting drunk on alcohol? And what wino or lush didn’t get his start by taking a few sips of his grandfather’s beer when he was a kid? The conclusion is inescapable: If conservatives were really serious about the dangers of gateway drugs, then they would try to get the government to ban beer — the real gateway drug.' Leafly reports that 'Our society is pre-programmed to drink; we just don’t realize it. But every day, we’re bombarded with media and advertisements that make alcohol seem normal while cannabis remains illegal, difficult to obtain, and harshly penalized when enjoyed in public settings. Most people resort to booze to initiate conversations, take the edge off an awkward first-date, or battle with social anxiety in a new environment. And for many people, cannabis does all of that without requiring you to deal with moral or physical hangovers.'

One of the arguments used by anti-cannabis lobby is that legalization will increase the number of road fatalities. This argument has been proven false repeatedly, but it still persists. NORML reports that - 'Investigators reported that the passage of both medical cannabis access laws and adult-use legalization laws were linked with overall declines in pedestrian fatalities, including declines in alcohol-related fatalities. Authors suggested that these results may be due to consumers substituting cannabis for alcohol.They concluded: “As of 2019, we find [that] liberalization has been associated with lower pedestrian fatalities, not higher. Further, the pattern is consistent with the alcohol substitution hypothesis. Specifically, the induced decline in alcohol related fatalities following liberalization is large enough to more than compensate for any additional fatalities due to marijuana consumption.”' Alcohol, in the meantime continues to contribute significantly to traffic related fatalities.

Some of the anti-cannabis lobby label the highly medicinal cannabis compound, delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) as the most harmful constituent of cannabis. They either demand an outright ban on THC-containing cannabis, or they demand that THC levels be kept as low as possible. In fact the line of division between the supposedly legal hemp and illegal marijuana is a completely arbitrary 0.3% THC limit which no one knows why has been set. In contrast, one finds alcohol of widely varying potency freely available wherever it is sold. The news provider Reason reports that - 'If states generally do not see the need to cap the potency of distilled spirits, it is hard to figure why cannabis, a far less hazardous product, requires such a safeguard. But the legal treatment of marijuana has long been anomalous, and evidently some of that irrationality lingers in the minds of politicians even when they are happy to legalize the industry and reap the resulting tax revenue.' Counter Punch reports that - 'Consuming too much THC at one time can be temporarily unpleasant. But studies have as of yet failed to identify any independent relationship between cannabis use and mental, physical, or psychiatric illnesses. Furthermore, THC — regardless of potency or quantity — cannot cause death by lethal overdose. Alcohol, by contrast, is routinely sold in lethal dose quantities. Drinking a handle of vodka could easily kill a person, yet vodka is available in liquor stores throughout the country. Just as alcohol is available in a variety of potencies, from light beer to hard liquor, so is cannabis. So most users regulate their intake accordingly.'

Another argument frequently used by the anti-cannabis lobby is that cannabis usage causes insanity. This myth was comprehensively proved wrong by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895, and has been repeatedly been proven wrong since then by the latest scientifc findings, which is the reason why we are seeing the wave of legalization across US states and western countries today. Alcohol, on the other hand, as a contributor to insanity is rarely spoken of. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895 writes in its report - 'As contributing causes for insanity - There are eighteen of these mixed cases in which alcohol has been ascertained to be a possible factor. In view of the connection between alcohol and insanity as established in Europe,and in view of the clear evidence that brain lesions are directly caused by alcohol, there seems certainly not less reason for ascribing these cases to alcohol than to hemp drugs. The English statistics show percentages of 19.8 and 7.2 of cases as due to alcohol for males and females respectively. The Commission are of opinion that such high percentages cannot be expected in India; for, although the action of alcohol is more injurious in the tropics, the people of this country are generally much more abstemious'

When the British started taking steps to prohibit cannabis usage in 19th century India, many experts warned that this would lead to the increased consumption of alcohol, a much more harmful drug. These warnings were unheeded, as the British rulers wished to increase tax revenue through the sale of distilled western alcohol. Today, alcohol abuse is a major problem in India, as it is in many places across the world. The magazine Scroll In reports that - 'The urgency of Punjab’s alcohol problem is under-recognised – it is one of three states where, a survey found, more than half the male population consumed alcohol. While Punjab’s drug abuse problem has drawn wide attention, the survey, done in 2019 by India’s social justice ministry along with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, suggested the state also had an alcohol dependence problem.'

In the light of all this, it is quite important to revisit the findings of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1895, with regard to the usage of alcohol and cannabis in 19th century India. The Indian Hemp Commission's findings on alcohol in comparison to cannabis is as follows:

490. In this connection it is well to notice the references made to alcohol. It is only a minority of the witnesses who compare alcohol and hemp drugs. But it is a striking fact that of these witnesses a majority of about three to one declare alcohol to be more injurious than hemp drugs. In every province the majority of the witnesses who make this comparison hold the view above expressed. This majority includes experienced officers of Government. Thus Colonel Hutchinson, Commissioner of Lahore (Punjab witness No. 4), says: "So far as effects have come to my notice, the effects of liquor are infinitely worse than those of drugs." Mr. J. B. Thomson, Collector of Allahabad (North-Western Provinces witness No. 2), gave evidence to the following effect: "I remember no case from which I can deduce the theory that the use of the drugs is in any way connected with crime; that is to say, from my own personal experience. I cannot say the same regarding alcohol even among natives of this country." Similarly, Mr. Toynbee, Commissioner of Bhagalpur (Bengal witness No. 4), says: "I have never had persons pointed out to me as social wrecks from the effects of ganja. As far as I have seen, many more cases of evil effects from alcohol than from hemp have come before me." And Colonel Bowie, Commissioner in the Central Provinces (witness No. 2), says: "I can call to mind a great many cases which I have had to deal with as a Magistrate and as a Sessions Judge, in which serious hurt and homicide have been caused by persons under the influence of alcohol, but not a single case of crime of any kind which had been committed under the influence of bhang or ganja." Representative officers from other provinces might be quoted, such as Mr. Vidal or Mr. Campbell, C.I.E., in Bombay, or Mr. H. E. M. James, Commissioner in Sind. The Rev. Mr. Laflamme (Madras witness No. 153), who took much pains in collecting information, gives evidence in the same sense. It is, however, in the northern provinces that there is most experience of these drugs. The only officer of standing in Upper India who holds the contrary view is Mr. T. Stoker, Excise Commissioner, North-Western Provinces (witness No. 6), who says: "I put these drugs above liquor and opium in their injurious tendencies." In saying this, he differs, however, both from his predecessor, Mr. R. Wall (witness No. 233), who held the office for eleven years, and from the Hon'ble A. Cadell (witness No. 1), who is the Member of the Board of Revenue in charge of Excise.

The opinion that alcohol is more injurious than hemp drugs is also expressed by leading Native gentlemen in these provinces, such as Maharaja Bahadur Sir Jotindra Mohan Tagore, K.C.S.I. (Bengal witness No. 163), Munshi Newal Kishore (North-Western Provinces witness No. 231), Babu P.C. Chatterji, Judge, Chief Court (Punjab witness No. 76), and the Hon'ble Gangadhar Madho Chitnavis (Central Provinces witness No. 46). The first of these only need be quoted. He says: "The use of the aforesaid indigenous drugs appears to me to be preferable to the use of ardent spirits and wines now rapidly replacing them to the great injury of the moral and material well-being of our people. Prohibition, I fear, would lead many to take to the use of ardent liquors, and this, in my humble opinion, would be replacing one evil by another of still greater magnitude." These views are held by the great majority of the native witnesses who make the comparison between hemp drugs and alcohol; and there is really no witness of authority on the other side.

This is also the opinion of medical witnesses who make this comparison. It is no doubt an accepted and established opinion among medical men that the evil effects of alcohol are intensified in the tropics. This may explain the very strong opinion held regarding alcohol. Perhaps it is unnecessary to refer to more of these witnesses than to two of more than ordinary experience who take a very strong view of the deleterious character of hemp drugs if used to excess, but a still stronger view regarding alcohol. Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Crombie says: "I believe that the habit of using ganja moderately is absolutely harmless; but I think even the moderate use of alcohol is liable to produce tissue changes in the long run. Further, I here refer entirely to the native community; and it is my observation that when a native takes to alcohol, it is extremely difficult for him to remain moderate; and in life assurance work, of which I have a good deal, I always advise an extra premium in the case of any native who indulges in alcohol even in the most moderate way, and utterly refuse to accept a native life if there is evidence of the consumption of alcohol to any considerable extent which would still be considered moderate in the case of Europeans. My experience leads me to hold the same views of the effects of alcohol on the lower classes. A native who takes to liquor is lost. As regards the excessive use, I would still place alcohol first. I regard it as most deleterious." The only other medical man who need be quoted is Dr. H. M, Clark, a well-known Medical Missionary in the Punjab (witness No. 46), who says: "As regards charas, I think there can be no such thing as moderate use, if we mean such use as will not leave any permanent bad effect on the system. In whatever quantity it is used, it is bound to be deleterious. I should say that in this country alcohol does more harm than charas." These views are supported by distinguished native medical men like Rai Bahadur Kanny Lall Dey, C.I.E. (Bengal witness No. 117), and others.

It is not within the province of the Commission to come to any definite finding on this evidence as to the comparative effects of alcohol and hemp drugs. The effects of alcohol were not within the scope of the inquiry. As has already been stated, it is only a minority of the witnesses who make the comparison. It was not asked for in the Commission's questions, and has only been incidentally made by certain witnesses. The Commission have not felt called on to test the correctness of the views of the witnesses on this point, as this could only have been done by a full inquiry into the effects of liquor. But it is important to observe the existence of these views. In this connection it is interesting to notice the existence in certain parts of the country of a belief among ignorant persons that "the attack on hemp drugs was due to a desire to foster European liquor" (see the evidence of Mr. William Almon, Assistant Collector, Abkari Department in the town of Bombay, witness No. 38); or, as another witness puts it, "the agitation is attributed to them who are anxious to encourage the spread of alcohol, i.e., the persons who import and manufacture liquor" (V. K. Joglekar, Bombay witness No. 110). The existence of such misapprehensions can only be explained by the difficulty felt in accounting for an agitation against these drugs alone. The Rev. Mr. Laflamme (Madras witness No. 153) says: "Many are surprised to hear that the Government is concerned about a practice which is confined to so small a portion of the people as is ganja and bhang, and is not concerned about the widespread, rapidly increasing, and much more injurious habit of alcoholic drink, from which much greater harm results. I have been six years in the country, and engaged in village work during four years. Before entering on these inquiries I did not know the hemp drugs were in use among the people, and had only met with them in the temples." One witness of much experience (Khan Bahadur Kadir Dad Khan, C.I.E., Sind witness No. 4) says: "All classes of the people, from the most influential spiritual leader to the lowest beggar, will say that the British Government, while not interfering or prohibiting the use of alcohol in their own country, are stopping them here from the use of less intoxicating drugs, which they have been using from time immemorial, and which is also religiously respected."

One of the interesting aspects of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission's attempts to understand the cannabis culture in 19th century India was the difficulty for witnesses to identify a cannabis consumer. The cannabis consumer was an inconspicous part of Indian society, having been a part of Indian culture for thousands of years, indicating the harmlessness of its usage on both the user and society, in general. The Commission writes that - '451. There has been some difficulty in obtaining definite information regarding the effects of hemp drugs. This difficulty has not arisen from any unwillingness on the part of witnesses to tell what they know...The difficulty has arisen from the general ignorance of the subject which has not hitherto attracted special attention. One result of the labours of the Commission has been to show how much ignorance prevails regarding the consumption of these drugs and their effects. This ignorance is not confined to Europeans. It extends to a large number of native witnesses. It is not confined to those who live apart from the common people. It extends to many whose duties are believed to bring them into close and constant contact with the people. Not a few persons who were asked to give evidence declined to do so, and others did so somewhat reluctantly, on the ground that they had little or no experience of the consumption of the drugs. To quote a non-official witness on this point, the Rev. George Pittendrigh (Madras witness No. 160) says: "I have been in India for nine years. I had hardly heard the name of ganja. I had heard it occasionally in connection with handymen and coachmen, and so on, but I had (so far as I know) seen none of its effects. I had heard that they were similar to opium—a narcotic or intoxicant. That was all I knew. It was not till after I heard of the Commission that I made any special enquiry into the matter. I enquired first of Europeans and respectable natives, students and others, graduates and other men of some standing. No one seemed to know anything about it. The ordinary caste native seemed only to know in a general way that it was used by Muhammadans, bairagis, loafers, and ruffians. Europeans seemed to know nothing of its use." The above is by no means an exceptional statement. Much the same evidence is given by officials as well as non-officials, and by natives as well as Europeans. It is not confined to one province, but is given all over India. This state of things is not difficult to explain. As a matter of fact, it is not usual for those who use the drugs, especially those who smoke them, to do so in the presence of others. It is usually only the dissipated who make a practice of publicly using intoxicants. The moderate consumer is generally known only to those who have occasion to join him at his meals or at the times when he takes his regular dose. In this country there is this additional fact to be considered, that custom is distinctly against smoking in the presence of any one who is in any sense superior or entitled to respect. Thus it would be only rarely that a man would smoke in the presence of a neighbour who had not specially come to join him. As to the casual smoker on the street or elsewhere, the passer-by would probably not know that he was consuming hemp drugs; for he smokes the drug as a rule in the same manner as he would smoke tobacco, and also mixed with tobacco, which to a certain extent conceals the smell. On the whole, then, it is easily intelligible that respectable persons should have a very limited knowledge of the consumption of hemp drugs, and especially of the smoking of ganja and charas, except by dissipated or excessive consumers. As might have been anticipated from a careful consideration of the circumstances, the experience of a large number of witnesses, even of those who have seen something of the use of the drugs, is found to be confined to having seen palki-bearers or boatmen smoke in the midst of hard work, or to occasionally seeing a friend indulge. Some other witnesses have only known the habit as practised by such persons as fakirs or by dissipated persons who consume to excess. Some have only seen the drug used when they have gone in the way of duty, or, in pursuance of this inquiry, to shops or other places where smokers resort. The witnesses are very few who have any extensive and accurate acquaintance with consumption.'

The above account also shows the ignorance of those who formulated the anti-cannabis laws. They belonged to a different class, the ruling and upper class. Their intoxicant of choice was alcohol. They projected all the harms of alcohol onto cannabis, and then used this distortion of reality to bring about the ban on cannabis, while keeping alcohol legal. Today, in the US, cannabis finds itself in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, as a most dangerous drug, with high potential for abuse, whereas alcohol does not even appear on the list.

But slowly, with increasing awareness and the spread of communication, the evidence is starting to stack up in favor of cannabis, and against alcohol. People are increasingly showing a preference for cannabis over alcohol, as a health decision, when it comes to a choice of recreational drugs. Some people are consuming both, saying that the ingestion of cannabis enables them to reduce the intake of alcohol. The alcohol industry, which traditionally took an opposing stand to cannabis, is now starting to build synergy with cannabis, through the introduction of cannabis infused alcoholic drinks. It is ironic that this industry, which does all it can to keep cannabis prohibited, is now trying various approaches to jump onto the legal cannabis bandwagon. NORML reports that 'We’ve already seen the influence of these corporate interests. In some instances, many of these same people have lobbied against consumer-friendly legalization provisions, such as the right for adults to cultivate marijuana in the privacy of their homes. These corporate entities also have pushed for statewide limits on the number of licensed cannabis producers and retailers, in an effort to keep prices and supply artificially limited — and to keep the economic benefits of legalization largely out of the reach of average Americans, especially people of color.' The hops that are used to brew beer and cannabis share a common ancestry dating back 28 million years and so the blending of the two seems to hold promise. Many places, however, have put a hold on cannabis infused alcohol.

Cannabis tax revenue is significant competition for alcohol tax revenue, in places like California. In fact, in a number of the US states that have legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, cannabis revenues for the state have overtaken that for alcohol, and only appears to be increasing. NORML reports that - 'In the two states with the most mature adult-use cannabis markets – Colorado and Washington – cannabis excise tax revenues outpaced those collected on the sale of alcohol and tobacco. “Broadly speaking, the experience of Colorado and Washington demonstrate that a state can collect a significant amount of revenue from marijuana taxes and that collection should mostly increase over time,” the report’s authors wrote.'

Retail outlets that sell alcohol are looking to sell cannabis using their established supply chain. Cannabis consumption lounges are as popular in some places as alcohol lounges. Cannabis tourism is starting to become as popular as wine tourism in California and Colorado, besides traditional places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

The potential exists for cannabis in many cultures, where alcohol is viewed as taboo, and where cannabis flourished traditionally. Unfortunately many of these cultures have taken a more regressive approach to cannabis than they have taken to alcohol in recent times, misled by the misinformation about cannabis, and failing to understand that intoxicants have existed as long as the world has existed. Providing a person with safer options for intoxication is the need of the hour, given that intoxicants have largely fueled creativity, relaxation and health, as much as anything else. The deprivation of a safe intoxicant, like cannabis, only leads to the pursuit of much more dangerous and addictive options, options worse than alcohol, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, resulting in increasing harms to society and health.

From a personal standpoint, I have been acquainted with at least half a dozen persons who lost their lives through their abuse of alcohol. Most of them were well educated, had repectable jobs, and could be termed as intelligent persons. However the abuse of alcohol rendered them jobless, dying at the doorstep of an alcohol shop, waiting for it to open, or dying in a room somewhere, all alone after their families had had enough and left them. Some of their bodies were discovered only after some days, such was the isolation and despair that they had got themselves trapped into. I am sure that every one of us knows at least some persons who have had their lives snuffed out due to alcohol. Yet, as a society, we continue to sing paens to alcohol, while maligning the herb that could keep us from slipping into hell. No, I am not advocating for the complete prohibition of alcohol. Far from it. I enjoy my drink. I am also completely opposed to the thinking that foists one's preferences forcibly on others. This is in fact what the consumers of alcohol have done to the cannabis user by prohibiting cannabis, while keeping alcohol legal. I have the need for cannabis as a safe alternative intoxicant to alcohol that I can always go to without ending up in hell. Cannabis gives me everything that alcohol does, and much much more. As Aldous Huxley, wrote in The Doors of Perception in 1954 - 'The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.'

How the future plays out in terms of alcohol and cannabis remains to be seen but it would be foolish and downright unhealthy to try and sideline cannabis these days in a much more aware world.

The following list of articles taken from various media speak about the above subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of yours truly at the time of reading the article.

'Alcohol abuse sloshes on. You probably know the stats but let’s review…

Nearly 70% of adults said that they drank alcohol in the past year; 55% in the last month. Over 14 million U.S. adults suffer from alcohol use disorder, along with over 400,000 youths ages 12 to 17. An estimated 95,0005 people (approximately 68,000 men and 27,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Alcohol misuse costs this country nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year.

So why, WHY jump on that particularly ugly, boozy bad-idea bandwagon when there is cannabis, a sweet yet complicated plant winking to you in the wings at the party stage, ready to give you a buzz maybe reminiscent of an alcohol buzz (beer is made with fermented hops, which is a close plant cousin of cannabis). But so much better for you in so many ways.'

https://www.laweekly.com/alcohol-takes-backseat-to-cannabis-as-intoxicant-of-choice/

Investigators reported that the passage of both medical cannabis access laws and adult-use legalization laws were linked with overall declines in pedestrian fatalities, including declines in alcohol-related fatalities. Authors suggested that these results may be due to consumers substituting cannabis for alcohol.

They concluded: “As of 2019, we find [that] liberalization has been associated with lower pedestrian fatalities, not higher. Further, the pattern is consistent with the alcohol substitution hypothesis. Specifically, the induced decline in alcohol related fatalities following liberalization is large enough to more than compensate for any additional fatalities due to marijuana consumption.”

https://norml.org/news/2023/03/02/analysis-cannabis-legalization-associated-with-decrease-in-alcohol-related-fatalities-involving-pedestrians/

Now, now...you should know that if you feed the eternal spirit alcohol - or payee thanni (as the Tamils call it) or fire water (as the Native Indians call it) - instead of ganja, then the form that will manifest is that of Bhairava, the fearsome one, and not Siva, the peaceful one...It does not make any difference either way to the eternal spirit, but if you, who see yourself as separate from the eternal spirit, happen to be around, it could mean the difference between hell and heaven...

Nov 03, 2022 2:51:55pm

Regulators in California collected the largest amount of excise tax revenue ($774 million) while regulators in Alaska collected the least ($30 million).

In the two states with the most mature adult-use cannabis markets – Colorado and Washington – cannabis excise tax revenues outpaced those collected on the sale of alcohol and tobacco. “Broadly speaking, the experience of Colorado and Washington demonstrate that a state can collect a significant amount of revenue from marijuana taxes and that collection should mostly increase over time,” the report’s authors wrote.

The Center’s analysis did not tabulate additional revenues generated from state sales taxes and/or locally imposed taxes on cannabis products.

https://norml.org/news/2022/10/13/analysis-marijuana-excise-taxes-yield-nearly-3-billion-in-revenue-in-fiscal-year-2022

Governments the world over continue to keep the ganja away from people and instead offer tobacco, alcohol and prescription drugs as alternatives while they pursue war games and economic power for themselves...

And then there was Covid...

Updated Sep 23, 2022 1:28:29pm

Smoke that joint (the natural one with the right balance of THC and CBD not synthetic skunk with predominantly THC) when you drink to protect your liver..

"In conclusion, we demonstrate that CBD treatment significantly attenuates liver injury induced by chronic plus binge alcohol in a mouse model and oxidative burst in human neutrophils. CBD ameliorates alcohol-induced liver injury by attenuating inflammatory response involving E-selectin expression and neutrophil recruitment, and consequent oxidative/nitrative stress, in addition to attenuation of the alcohol-induced hepatic metabolic dysregulation and steatosis. These beneficial effects, coupled with the proven safety of CBD in human clinical trials and its current orphan drug approval by FDA for various indications suggest that it may have therapeutic potential in liver disease associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic dysregulation and steatosis."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10924-8

'The urgency of Punjab’s alcohol problem is under-recognised – it is one of three states where, a survey found, more than half the male population consumed alcohol. While Punjab’s drug abuse problem has drawn wide attention, the survey, done in 2019 by India’s social justice ministry along with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, suggested the state also had an alcohol dependence problem.'

https://scroll.in/article/1005888/the-dark-underbelly-of-punjabs-liquor-problem

'Here's what The Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.

The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself'

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams

'The enactment of state-level, adult-use marijuana legalization laws is not associated with increases in either drug treatment admissions, violent crime, or overdose deaths, according to a comprehensive analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

A team of economists reviewed nationally representative data across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to “comprehensively explore the broader impacts of RMLs [recreational marijuana laws], providing some of the first evidence on how marijuana legalization is affecting illicit drug use, heavy alcohol use, arrests for drug and non-drug offenses, and objectively-measured adverse drug-related events including drug-related overdose deaths and admissions into substance abuse treatment services.”'

https://norml.org/news/2021/07/22/analysis-adult-use-legalization-laws-not-linked-to-increases-in-violent-crime-problematic-substance-abuse

'Results
Compared to all other states that did not legalize recreational cannabis, Colorado households showed a 13% average monthly decrease in purchases of all alcoholic products combined (estimate, 0.87; CI, 0.77, 0.98) and a 6% decrease in wine (0.94; CI, 0.89, 0.99). Estimates in Washington were suggestive of an increase in spirits purchased in both the unrestricted (1.24; CI, 1.12, 1.37) and restricted sample (1.18; CI, 1.02, 1.36). Oregon showed a significant decrease in monthly spirits purchased when compared to its selected comparator state (0.87; CI, 0.77, 0.99) and to all other states without legalized recreational cannabis (0.85; CI, 0.77, 0.95).

Conclusions
Results suggest that alcohol and cannabis are not clearly substitutes nor complements to one-another. Future studies should examine additional states as more time passes and more post-legalization data becomes available, use cannabis purchase data and consider additional methods for control selection in quasi-experimental studies.'

https://jcannabisresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42238-021-00085-x

'Conclusion

Cannabis substitution was considered feasible by all three groups and in some MAPs (Managed Alcohol Programs) residents are already using cannabis. Partial substitution of cannabis for doses of alcohol was preferred. All three groups identified a need for additional supports for implementation including peer support, staff education, and counselling. Sourcing and funding cannabis were identified as primary challenges to successful CSP implementation in MAPs.'

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-021-00512-5

'As the leading producer of cannabis in the U.S., California is on track to fill a growing demand for the product. The expansion of this crop into wine regions could spark the state’s biggest transformation since the emergence of the premium wine industry.'

https://www.winespectator.com/issues/cannabis-in-wine-country-2021-05-30

'The maker of Samuel Adams beer and Truly Hard seltzer is moving into Canada's cannabis beverages market.

The Boston Beer Co. says it will create a subsidiary to serve as a Canadian research and innovation hub for non-alcoholic cannabis beverages.'

https://www.tricitynews.com/the-mix/samuel-adams-maker-to-launch-cannabis-beverages-subsidiary-in-canada-3785734

'And third, if you are looking for a gateway drug, then the real gateway drug is alcohol (ethanol — the active ingredient in all beers, wines, and distilled spirits). What person who ever smoked pot, snorted cocaine, injected heroin, or popped ecstasy pills did not go down the long and winding road to being a drug addict without first getting drunk on alcohol? And what wino or lush didn’t get his start by taking a few sips of his grandfather’s beer when he was a kid? The conclusion is inescapable: If conservatives were really serious about the dangers of gateway drugs, then they would try to get the government to ban beer — the real gateway drug.'

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-real-gateway-drug/

'Researchers reported that participants assigned to use CBD-dominant cannabis during the trial period “drank fewer drinks per drinking day, had fewer alcohol use days, and fewer alcohol and cannabis co-use days compared with the other groups.” Subjects assigned to the other two groups reported no changes in their drinking patterns.

Authors acknowledged that the results were “consistent with preclinical work suggesting that CBD may be associated with decreased alcohol consumption.” Separate studies have previously indicated that CBD may reduce subjects’ cravings for other controlled substances, including tobacco and heroin. '

https://norml.org/news/2021/04/29/study-use-of-cbd-dominant-cannabis-associated-with-reduced-alcohol-intake

'Utilizing the Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey from 2005 to 2019, I study spending on food and alcohol following recreational marijuana law (RML). Exploiting differences in the timing of the passage of RMLs and employing two-way fixed-effects methods, I find that households located in states adopting these laws increase their quarterly spending on food, which is driven mainly by spending on food consumed away from home. Legalization of recreational marijuana also leads to increased quarterly spending on alcohol. These findings suggest a complementarity between food, alcohol, and marijuana.'

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.4266

'If states generally do not see the need to cap the potency of distilled spirits, it is hard to figure why cannabis, a far less hazardous product, requires such a safeguard. But the legal treatment of marijuana has long been anomalous, and evidently some of that irrationality lingers in the minds of politicians even when they are happy to legalize the industry and reap the resulting tax revenue.'

https://reason.com/2021/04/20/arbitrary-thc-limits-could-wipe-out-much-of-the-cannabis-industry/

'The objective of the curfew is to discourage any VC sappers or other bomb-throwing terrorist types who might otherwise feel free to skulk around at night and cause trouble. But one of the most painfully visible side effects of the curfew has been to make us all prisoners from nine in the night until six in the morning in whatever hotel we're staying in: and after a month or so of this, a lot of people are starting to cave in to almost any vice or noxious habit that they can get their hands on. The styles of overindulgence seem to vary - from one hotel to another. The Continental, for instance, is considered to be full of "pinkos and dope fiends" by the "old Asia hands" across the square in the Caravelle, where the political style is more hawkish and the vice style tends more to booze and brawling.

Last night in the Caravelle bar, an argument between some British correspondents and a group of pilots from the Flying Tiger airlines erupted into violence and serious beating for one of the Britishers...while the only casualties in the Continental last night occurred in a room just up the wide spiral staircase from mine, where a half-dozen American journalists were brought to their knees by a combination of opium, Pernod, and brutal Cambodian grass.

These are some of the people I would have to wake up and depend on for guidance in the wake of a sudden rocket attack. This afternoon I tried to teach some of them to use the hellishly expensive but technically simple Transciever radio units I brought back from Hong Kong - along with about a thousand hits of Lomotil and three quarts of a powerful antinausea medicine called Emetrol - but not even the sharpest of the Time and Newsweek correspondents could cope with a basic walkie-talkie set.'

- Interdicted Dispatch from the Global Affairs Desk, May 22, 1975, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson

'Illinois took in more tax dollars from marijuana than alcohol for the first time last quarter, according to the state Department of Revenue.

From January to March, Illinois generated about $86,537,000 in adult-use marijuana tax revenue, compared to $72,281,000 from liquor sales.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/illinois-gets-more-tax-revenue-from-marijuana-than-alcohol-state-says/

'Investigators concluded: “No significant associations between cannabis use and thickness were observed. The lack of cannabis-specific effects is consistent with literature reviews, large sample studies, and evidence that observed cannabis effects may be accounted for by comorbid alcohol.

“This study provides novel evidence that alcohol-related reductions in cortical thickness of control/salience brain networks likely represent the effects of alcohol exposure and premorbid characteristics of the genetic predisposition to misuse alcohol. The dual effects of these two alcohol-related causal influences have important and complementary implications regarding public health and prevention efforts to curb youth drinking.”'

'Consuming too much THC at one time can be temporarily unpleasant. But studies have as of yet failed to identify any independent relationship between cannabis use and mental, physical, or psychiatric illnesses.

Furthermore, THC — regardless of potency or quantity — cannot cause death by lethal overdose. Alcohol, by contrast, is routinely sold in lethal dose quantities. Drinking a handle of vodka could easily kill a person, yet vodka is available in liquor stores throughout the country.

Just as alcohol is available in a variety of potencies, from light beer to hard liquor, so is cannabis. So most users regulate their intake accordingly.'

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/12/is-pot-really-more-potent-these-days-does-it-matter/

'We’ve already seen the influence of these corporate interests. In some instances, many of these same people have lobbied against consumer-friendly legalization provisions, such as the right for adults to cultivate marijuana in the privacy of their homes. These corporate entities also have pushed for statewide limits on the number of licensed cannabis producers and retailers, in an effort to keep prices and supply artificially limited — and to keep the economic benefits of legalization largely out of the reach of average Americans, especially people of color.'

https://norml.org/blog/2021/03/12/big-alcohol-and-big-tobacco-coalition-emerges-to-shape-legalization-in-their-favor/

'Results: In all five cases, there was a highly statistical decrease in the disruptive behavior score from 18±1.0 before cannabis use to 6±2.1 after introduction of cannabis (p=0.0002).

Discussion: In children and young adults with FASD [Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder], cannabis, mostly cannabidiol (CBD), has been associated with a marked and statistically significant improvement in serious disruptive behavior. These cases suggest that the efficacy and safety of CBD should be tested in well-controlled studies.'

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/can.2019.0056

'Findings
Across the sample (N=96), individuals drank approximately 29% fewer drinks (95% Confidence Interval (C.I.) 18%-39%, p<.001) and were 2.06 times (95% C.I. 1.37-3.08, p<.001) less likely to have a binge-drinking episode on days that cannabis was used compared with days cannabis was not used. These patterns were observed in males, females and the infrequent and frequent cannabis use groups. Findings were inconclusive regarding differences in the association between cannabis use and alcohol outcomes when comparing males and females and when comparing infrequent and frequent cannabis use groups.

Conclusions
Heavy drinkers engaged in treatment to reduce their alcohol consumption who also use cannabis appear to increase their cannabis use on days when they reduce their alcohol consumption.'

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.15407

'Many of the patients enrolled in Canada’s medical cannabis program report reducing their alcohol intake, according to data published in The International Journal of Drug Policy.

A team of researchers with the Canadian Institute for Substance Abuse Research and the University of Victoria, School of Public Health and Social Policy surveyed nearly 1,000 federally authorized medical cannabis patients. Survey participants reported on their use of alcohol prior to and following their enrollment in the nation’s medical cannabis access program.

Investigators reported that 44 percent of respondents reported “decreases in alcohol frequency” following their participation in the cannabis access program. Of those, 85 percent reported decreasing the number of drinks they consumed per week, while 18 percent reported consuming no alcohol during the 30-day period prior to taking the survey.'

https://norml.org/news/2020/10/22/canada-medical-cannabis-enrollees-often-report-reductions-in-alcohol-use

'Highlights

- Following medical cannabis initiation, 44% (n=419) of participants reported decreases in alcohol use frequency over 30 days, and 34% (n=323) decreased the number of standard drinks they had per week.
- Younger age (<55 years old) and higher rates of alcohol use prior to medical cannabis initiation were associated with greater odds of reducing alcohol.
- Specific intention to use medical cannabis to reduce alcohol consumption resulted in greater odds of reducing and/or ceasing use altogether.'

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395920303017

'Wine producers have long used appellations to establish reputations for quality and distinct characteristics of products from specific regions as well as to educate consumers about unique flavors and profiles generated by a certain place.

California’s new appellations law, Senate Bill 67, affords marijuana growers similar opportunities.

Legacy cannabis farmers can claim, market and protect the unique character of the marijuana produced in their regions, highlighting flavor, potency and quality differences for each place.

Protecting the reputation of those regions is critical to the success of the wine industry, Stults added, and that can be applied to marijuana as well.'

https://mjbizdaily.com/how-new-california-cannabis-appellations-law-borrows-from-the-wine-industry/

'Studies on the effect of marijuana on domestic violence often suffer from endogeneity issues. To examine the effect of marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana legalization on serious domestic assaults, we conducted a difference-in-differences analysis on a panel dataset on NIBRS-reported assaults in 24 states over the 12 years between 2005 and 2016. Assaults disaggregated according to situation and extent of injury were employed as dependent variables. We found that while the total number of assaults did not change, decriminalization reduced domestic assaults involving serious injuries by 18%. From a harm reduction perspective, these results suggest that while the extensive margin of violence did not change, the intensive margin measured by the seriousness of assaults were substantially affected by decriminalization. This result may be partially explained by reductions in offender alcohol intoxication and weapon-involved assault.'

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260520961876

'Drug policy reform advocates have pointed out that this messaging perpetuates stereotypes about drug use, indicating that any interest in these substances signals that users may have a problem warranting treatment. But it’s also the case that there’s an abundance of reasons that people might enter “marijuana” into a search beyond looking for ways to score some of the product for use, including wanting to follow relevant news on public policy debates about its legalization. And besides, the vast majority of people who consume cannabis are not addicted to or dependent on it and aren’t likely to appreciate the suggestion that they may need professional help.

While promoting substance misuse treatment isn’t necessarily problematic in and of itself, advocates are pushing back about the fact that Twitter chose to peg these notices to cannabis and other currently illegal drugs in particular while it allows alcohol brands to be promoted on its platform.'

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/twitter-partners-with-feds-on-campaign-flagging-marijuana-searches-while-giving-alcohol-a-pass/

'Our society is pre-programmed to drink; we just don’t realize it. But every day, we’re bombarded with media and advertisements that make alcohol seem normal while cannabis remains illegal, difficult to obtain, and harshly penalized when enjoyed in public settings.

Most people resort to booze to initiate conversations, take the edge off an awkward first-date, or battle with social anxiety in a new environment. And for many people, cannabis does all of that without requiring you to deal with moral or physical hangovers.'

https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/cali-sober

'The association between domestic violence, including male perpetrated intimate partner violence against women, and psychoactive substance use has been investigated extensively. While it is not possible to ascertain a causal relationship between these phenomena, evidence shows that women who were injured by a male intimate partner are two to three times more likely to abuse alcohol and to have used cocaine than those who were not injured'

- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,

https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_6.pdf

'A bizarre happening in the United States during the prohibition era around 1930 was an omen of things to come. It was caused not by an insecticide but by a substance belonging chemically to the same group as the organic phosphate insecticides. During the period some medicinal substances were being pressed into service as substitutes for liquor, being exempted from the prohibition law. One of these was Jamaica ginger. But the United States Pharmacopeia product was expensive, and bootleggers conceived the idea of making a substitute Jamaica ginger. They succeeded so well that their spurious product responded to the appropriate chemical tests and decieved the government chemists. To give their false ginger the necessary tang they had introduced a chemical known as triorthocresyl phosphate. This chemical, like parathion and its relatives, destroys the protective enzyme cholinesterase. As a consequence of drinking the bootleggers' product some 15,000 people developed a permanently crippling type of paralysis of the leg muscles, a condition called 'ginger paralysis'. The paralysis was accompanied by destruction of the nerve sheaths and by degeneration of the cells of the anterior horns of the spinal cord.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962

'Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education. This, of course, is not surprising. The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time. The urge to do something for the young is strong only in parents, and in them only for the few years during which their children go to school. Equally unsurprising is the current attitude towards drink and smoke. In spite of the growing army of hopeless alcoholics, in spite of the hundreds of thousands of persons annually maimed or killed by drunken drivers, popular comedians still crack jokes about alcohol and its addicts.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'According to the survey, 81 percent of respondents believe that tobacco cigarettes are "very harmful." Fifty-one percent of respondents similarly view alcohol as "very harmful." By contrast, only 26 percent of those surveyed ranked marijuana as "very harmful." '
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/poll-americans-view-cigarettes-and-alcohol-as-more-harmful-than-cannabis

'The overall displacement or cannibalization of tobacco by cannabis products in California alone amounted to $84.5 million overall from 2017-2018 (not including 2017 e-cigarettes, figures for which were not available). The shifts amounted to $33.8 million for cigarettes, $8.3 million for non-cigarette tobacco, and $42.6 million for e-cigarettes (in 2018 only).

Across the U.S. overall, the 2018 spending shifts amounted to $4.3 billion for alcohol: (1.54% of that market), $1.3 billion for pharmaceuticals (1.10%), and $219 million (0.22%) for tobacco.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/altria-pmi-merger-confirms-longtime-predictions-marks-industry-progression/

'For many adults, researchers say, moderate use is probably fine. “I compare it to alcohol,” says Earl Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge. “Too much or the wrong situation can be bad, but in other situations it can be beneficial. I think we’re going to find the same thing with cannabis.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02530-7

'When it comes to withdrawal, Armentano said research has found symptoms to be mild and short-lived.

“Like with most matters specific to cannabis,” he said, the new findings “need to be placed in appropriate context.”

He compared cannabis withdrawal to withdrawal symptoms when someone stops using tobacco or alcohol.

“The profound physical withdrawal effects associated with tobacco are so severe that many subjects who strongly desire to quit end up reinitiating their use. In the case of alcohol, the abrupt ceasing of use in heavy users can be so severe that it can lead to death,” Armentano said.

“Simply withdrawing from caffeine can lead to a number of adverse side effects, like rebound headaches,” he added. “But we do not arrest 600,000 Americans annually for their use of caffeine.”'
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/marijuana-withdrawal-symptoms-are-real-for-regular-users

'A study on the impact of cannabis legalization on alcohol sales in Colorado, Oregon and Washington, the three states with the longest history of legal nonmedical use of cannabis, showed that there was no evidence that legalization had had any impact on the sale of spirits or on total alcohol sales, which are generally considered a good proxy for alcohol consumption in the United States. The study showed that the per capita sale of spirits had increased by 3.6 per cent in Oregon, 5.4 per cent in Washington and 7.6 per cent in Colorado in 2018, after the measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were implemented in those states. Consistent with national trends, per capita sales of beer had declined by 3.6 per cent in Colorado, 2.3 per cent in Washington and 3.6 per cent in Oregon. The sale of wine increased by 0.7 per cent in Oregon, declined by 3.1 per cent in Washington and increased by 3.2 per cent in Colorado. Overall, per capita sales of alcoholic beverages were fairly stable, as they increased by 1.7 per cent in Colorado, declined by 0.2 per cent in Washington and declined by 0.5 per cent in Oregon' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'As I began using stuff every day, or often several times a day, I stopped drinking and going out at night. When you use junk you don't drink. Seemingly, the body that has a quantity of junk in its cells will not absorb alcohol. The liquor stays in the stomach, slowly building up nausea, discomfort, and dizziness, and there is no kick. Using junk would be a sure cure for alcoholics. I also stopped bathing. When you use junk the feel of water on the skin is unpleasant for some reason, and junkies are reluctant to take a bath.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'More than half of the studies, however, have shown that cannabis and alcohol are substitutes, meaning that the increased use of one substance reduces the use of the other. Other researchers have also suggested that cannabis, especially cannabis for medical use, may serve as a substitute for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, including prescription drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'In Washington, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol is considered the number one contributing factor in fatal crashes and is involved in nearly half of all traffic fatalities. However, in that state, reporting on such cases does not differentiate between cannabis and other drugs. The number of reported cases of driving under the influence of drugs has increased by more than 60 per cent in Washington since 2014. Although not so recent, data on drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for alcohol or drugs in Washington during the period 2008–2016 show that 44 per cent tested positive for two or more substances. Of those substances, the most common one was alcohol, followed by THC, while alcohol and THC formed the most common polydrug combination involved in fatal crashes during that period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'Starting in 2014, data on traffic fatalities in Colorado showed a marked increase in the number of traffic deaths in which the driver tested positive for cannabis use. Over the period 2009–2013, there were 53 traffic deaths on average per year in which the driver tested positive for cannabis, a figure that increased to an average of 110 such deaths in the period 2014–2018, and the proportion of fatalities with drivers testing positive for cannabis doubled over the period 2009–2018. However, toxicology analysis has shown that car crashes in which the driver was found to be under the influence of cannabis frequently involved other drugs, in particular alcohol' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor's orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labelled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'A contentious issue between people who are for and against the legalization of cannabis remains whether it has had an impact on driving under the influence of cannabis and caused fatal car crashes. The evidence remains inconclusive, as within the United States there have been no differences in cannabis- or alcohol-related traffic fatalities between states that have and have not legalized the non-medical use of cannabis. As different research contributions have also shown, it is difficult to quantify the effects of cannabis on road accidents, as cannabis is often used in combination with alcohol, which increases the challenge of determining the influence of cannabis itself on road traffic accidents. Moreover, studies on THC levels and degrees of impairment have found that the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related; peak impairment does not occur when THC concentration in the blood is at or near peak levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'Cole did not have a habit at this time and he wanted to connect for some weed. He was a real tea head. He told me he could not enjoy himself without weed. I have seen people like that. For them, tea occupies the place usually filled by liquor. They don't have to have it in any physical sense, but they cannot have a really good time without it.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Although the Cannabis Act introduced a variety of classes of cannabis licences, including for smaller producers, the federal Government requires that a potential supplier have a production facility in place, meaning that the supplier will have already made a substantial investment prior to applying for a licence. Some have speculated that this has contributed to deterring small entrepreneurs from applying for licences and may have favoured the emergence of a market dominated or even monopolized by a relatively small number of large, multi-billion-dollar businesses. There have also been reports of the alcohol, tobacco and finance industries investing in companies involved in nonmedical cannabis production. For instance, according to media sources, in October 2017 Constellation Brands, a major international producer of wine, beer and spirits, invested $4 billion to acquire a 9.9 per cent stake in Canopy Growth, the leading Canadian producer, to develop cannabis-based beverages. By the end of December 2019, Constellation owned a 35 per cent stake in Canopy. In December 2018, the tobacco company Altria made a $1.8 million investment in Cronos Group, a cannabis production company, giving Altria a 45 per cent interest in Cronos. Earlier in the year, Molson Coors Brewing, another multinational alcohol company, signed a joint venture with Quebec-based HEXO to develop and market cannabis-infused beverages. Market analysts have predicted that the alcohol industry will also invest in companies that plan to produce beverages that combine cannabis and beer and, in particular, they predicted that by the end of 2019 two of the largest cannabis companies in the world would be owned by two of the largest alcohol and tobacco companies' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'In most provinces, the retail licensing regime is similar to that regulating the sale of liquor, and cannabis is sold through licensed retailers (private sector), provincial retail stores (public sector) and online. Many provinces have adopted a hybrid model that allows either public or private physical retail outlets together with online retail controlled by regulatory authorities, or a combination of all three. With the exception of the Nunavut territory, all the provinces and territories allow retail sales of cannabis products online. British Columbia and Yukon are the only province and territory that allow all three modes, while Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan have allowed private bricks-and-mortar retail stores.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'And in spite of the evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer, practically everybody regards tobacco smoking as being hardly less normal and natural than eating. From the point of view of the rationalist utilitarian this may seem odd. For the historian, it is exactly what you would expect. A firm conviction of the material reality of Hell never prevented mediaeval Christians from doing what their ambition, lust or covetousness suggested. Lung cancer, traffic accidents and the millions of miserable and misery-creating alcoholics are facts even more certain than was, in Dante's day, the fact of the Inferno. But all such facts are remote and unsubstantial compared with the near, felt fact of a craving, here and now, for release or sedation, for a drink or a smoke.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'The objectives of the current cannabis legislation in Canada are to keep cannabis away from young people (under 18 years of age), to prevent criminals from profiting from the distribution and sale of cannabis and to safeguard public health and safety by allowing adults (aged 18 and older) legal access to cannabis. Under the constitutional division of powers in Canada, the federal Government and provincial governments have different responsibilities. As the provinces historically developed their own systems to regulate the sale of alcohol, a similar approach has been applied to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis products.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf

'When a junkie off junk gets drunk to a certain point, his thoughts turn to junk.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Results:
Sixty-five articles were included (64 in humans, one in animals). We synthesised findings into categories: patterns of use, substitution practices, economic relationship, substance use disorders, policy evaluation, others and animal studies. Overall, 30 studies found evidence for substitution, 17 for complementarity, 14 did not find evidence for either, and four found evidence for both.

Conclusions:
Overall, the evidence regarding complementarity and substitution of cannabis and alcohol is mixed. We identified stronger support for substitution than complementarity, though evidence indicates different effects in different populations and to some extent across different study designs. The quality of studies varied and few were designed specifically to address this question. Dedicated high-quality research is warranted'
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881120919970

People who love alcohol should start and increase the brewing of beers, making of wines and distilling of spirits at home. They should work to bring back natural alcohols like palm toddy back into the mainstream. Industrial alcohol is harmful to public health due to its potency, toxicity and lower sustainability as compared to the small scale stuff. Money from big alcohol is mainly going into suppressing small scale industries, funding governments that are becoming increasingly repressive and blocking the efforts of reviving green and safer intoxicants like cannabis, the intoxicant of the poor. Industrial alcohol is fueling violence, crime, addiction and death in large numbers. Yes, it does have its place in society but that need not be at the cost of all other natural intoxicants. In fact the consumers of natural intoxicants should be the majority, especially the poorer folk, with industrial alcohol forming the minority consumers, especially the elite and those who can afford it. The ideal balance of alcohol should be small scale or home made alcohol to industrial alcohol in the ratio of somewhere like 70:30 in society. Then it will be truly sustainable, healthy and medicinal...
May 1, 2020, 6:58 PM

'The limited data at the global level show that intoxication may be a significant factor in homicide. However, alcohol seems to play a larger role in violence than do drugs' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf

'Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'Another area of concern in the cannabis debate is the growing influence of and investment by large corporations, especially the alcohol and tobacco industry, which is investing in the cannabis industry in North America. Such developments raise some concerns that, as the market for the non-medical use of cannabis is expanding rapidly, revenue and profits are likely to dictate the course of the nonmedical cannabis industry rather than public health considerations. These concerns are especially pertinent for jurisdictions where the non-medical use of cannabis has been legalized' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf

'Compared with those without medical cannabis recommendations, cannabis users with medical cannabis recommendations had 0.59 times fewer drinks/day, 0.44 times fewer occasions drinking 5+, and 0.78 times the average maximum number of drinks in one day (all ps < .05).'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30573025?dopt=Abstract

'I had never been able to drink before when I was on the junk, or junk sick. But eating hop is different from shooting the white stuff. You can mix hop and lush.
At first I started drinking at five in the afternoon. After a week, I started drinking at eight in the morning, stayed drunk all day and all night, and woke up drunk the next morning.
Every morning when I woke up, I washed down benzedrine, sanicin, and a piece of hop with black coffee and a shot of tequila. Then I lay back and closed my eyes to piece together the night before and yesterday. Often, I drew a blank from noon on. You sometimes wake up from a dream and think, "Thank God, I didn't really do that!" Reconstructing a period of blackout you think, "My God, did I really do it?" The line between saying and thinking is blurred. Did you say it or just think it?' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

Legalize marijuana to protect the mentally ill from alcohol and tobacco...

'“Such patients tend to pass away much younger, with estimates ranging from 12 to 25 years earlier than individuals in the general population. They don’t die from drug overdoses or commit suicide — the kinds of things you might suspect in severe psychiatric illness. They die from heart disease and cancer, problems caused by chronic alcohol and tobacco use,” said Sarah M. Hartz, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University.'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/substantce-abuse-all-in-the-psyche/article5535806.ece

Cannabis meets all these criteria plus it it naturally growing worldwide and has been used for tens of thousands of years...no need for a new drug, we just need to bring it back..reefer madness had clouded even Huxley's mind at the time that this was written...

'What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensible food and fibres. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to the heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of impotence or release from inhibition.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says people can't ingest a lethal dose of marijuana, the legality of the substance might not tell the whole story. In fact, alcohol is legal in all 50 states but is responsible for 88,000 deaths every year and 2.5 million years of potential life lost. '
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/learn/perceptions-of-alcohol-vs-marijuana/

'Collectively, given its favorable effects on alcohol-related harms and addiction phenotypes in preclinical models, CBD appears to have promise as a candidate AUD (alcohol use disorder) pharmacotherapy. This is further bolstered by the absence of abuse liability and its general tolerability.'
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acer.13964

'After ten days of the cure I had deteriorated shockingly. My clothes were spotted and stiff from the drinks I had spilled all over myself. I never bathed. I had lost weight, my hands shook, I was always spilling things, knocking over chairs, and falling down. But I seemed to have unlimited energy and a capacity for liquor I never had before. My emotions spilled out everywhere. I was uncontrollably social and would talk to anybody I could pin down. I forced distastefully intimate confidences on perfect strangers. Several times I made the crudest sexual propositions to people who had given no hint of reciprocity.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

Smoke that joint (the natural one with the right balance of THC and CBD not synthetic skunk with predominantly THC) when you drink to protect your liver..

"In conclusion, we demonstrate that CBD treatment significantly attenuates liver injury induced by chronic plus binge alcohol in a mouse model and oxidative burst in human neutrophils. CBD ameliorates alcohol-induced liver injury by attenuating inflammatory response involving E-selectin expression and neutrophil recruitment, and consequent oxidative/nitrative stress, in addition to attenuation of the alcohol-induced hepatic metabolic dysregulation and steatosis. These beneficial effects, coupled with the proven safety of CBD in human clinical trials and its current orphan drug approval by FDA for various indications suggest that it may have therapeutic potential in liver disease associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic dysregulation and steatosis."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10924-8

It is the same with cannabis...

'To most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous. Unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls. crimes of violence and traffic accidents. A man under the influence of mescalin quietly minds his own business. Moreover, the business he minds is an experience of the most enlightening kind, which does not have to be paid for (and this is surely important) by a compensatory hangover. Of the long-range consequences of regular mescalin taking we know very little. The Indians that consume peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the habit. However the available evidence is still scarce or sketchy.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'Hutchison and his team were able to statistically control for the use of alcohol while looking for the effects of cannabis, and vice versa. What they found for alcohol use was not surprising, considering booze is a known neurotoxin, Hutchison said: Heavier alcohol use led to greater declines in gray matter and declines in the quality of connections in white matter.

In contrast, "we don't see any statistically significant effects of cannabis on gray matter or white matter," Hutchison said.'
https://www.livescience.com/61786-marijuana-versus-alcohol-brain.html

'When we recently queried readers of the postdoc listserv about their use of booze to unwind, the virtual silence was deafening. We presumed that you were too busy with your work, too embarrassed, or too hung over from the night before to chime in. But responses eventually trickled in, and a few strong voices emerged.'
http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2005/02/mind-matters-are-science-trainees-driven-drink

'Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/Study-Alcohol-more-lethal-than-heroin-cocaine/article15672221.ece

'Ike took a very severe view of my drinking. "You're drinking, Bill. You're drinking and getting crazy. You look terrible. You look terrible in your face. Better you should go back to stuff than drink like this." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

' A single glass of wine will impair your driving more than smoking a joint. And under certain test conditions, the complex way alcohol and cannabis combine to affect driving behaviour suggests that someone who has taken both may drive less recklessly than a person who is simply drunk.'

'Among the survey’s revelations is a strong preference for cannabis over alcohol among adults who consume both. Two-thirds (65%) say that, given a choice, they prefer cannabis to alcohol. The survey also found some early signs of cultural drift away from alcohol: While nearly half (47%) of participants said that their drinking had not changed in the past two years, 31% said that they now drink less than they used to, compared to 23% saying that they drink more. Additionally, almost half (45%) said that they were likely to replace some of their drinking with cannabis in future. Given such, while many cannabis consumers currently drink, for many the displacement of alcohol appears to be a durable trend.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/cannabis-consumer-report-highlights-potential-displacement-of-alcohol/

'"The guys, the young men, we say, they're already smoking," said Steve Rannekleiv, Rabobank's global beverages strategist. "It's the people who are the more educated, more affluent, they are saying 'if it's legalized, I'll give it a try.' And that's definitely the demographic of the wine consumer."'
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/04/26/trading-wine-weed-legal-marijuana/550949002/

Huxley misses a point or two here..no drug will be universally perfect for all. There will always be a minority (better that than a majority) for whom any drug will be incompatible given different mental and physical constitutions. Also his obsession and faith in the Western system of synthesizing something that can be had in measured doses like pills or alcohol is unnecessary for natural intoxicants where margins are much larger and safer..cannabis is the ideal...peyote and psilocybin too, where it is available, but not to the extent of cannabis...nature has done the work already, no need for pharmacologists and neurologists to re-invent the wheel...

'Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky-drinking, marijuana- smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'“We haven’t faced the sort of challenges with people being under the influence (of marijuana) certainly to the degree that alcohol does,” Pearl said. “If I tried to quantify the portion of our security incidents that are alcohol-related, it would be an extremely high percentage. I don’t think I can say the same thing about marijuana.”'
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/nov/03/resorts-see-possibility-of-marijuana-lounges-as-a/

'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'More attention needs to be given to the millions of overdrinkers who contribute to approximately 3.1 million alcohol-related deaths worldwide each year (WHO, 2014). Little help has been available for them. This pilot study suggests that much overdrinking may be inadvertent and unintentional and surprise the overdrinker. Smartphone apps could help overdrinkers be more aware of the probability of unexpected shifts in drinking behavior and help them change their overdrinking behavior more rapidly and earlier in their lives.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6108020/

Ganja in the Indian sub-continent...

'The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worhip, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohameddan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'Individuals with concurrently high-alcohol use and depression/anxiety symptom trajectories reported that the most delinquent peer affiliations, and had the highest rates of severe violence over time.'
https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/alcalc/agy036/5005377

'Everyone knows millennials love marijuana. Now, a handful of polls by The Tylt back up that claim — and the numbers are staggering.'
https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/04/12/millennials-believe-marijuana-safer-than-alcohol/103451/

'In 2018, U.S. retail alcohol sales totaled $254 billion, nearly 7x overall cannabis sales (both legal and illicit) of $37.2 billion.
New Frontier Data estimates that overall domestic cannabis sales grew 6.7% in 2018, while alcohol sales meanwhile grew at 5% year over year (source: bw166).
In its upcoming white paper, The Nexus of Alcohol and Cannabis, New Frontier Data will provide useful insights into how cannabis consumers use alcohol (i.e., frequency profiles, policy views, and cannibalization analysis): For instance, 50% of high-frequency cannabis users are also high-frequency alcohol users, while cannabis users largely state a preference for cannabis over alcohol.
The report also offers key takeaways for cannabis and alcohol business operators, identifying opportunities to attract new consumers, and risks associated with changing patterns by both alcohol and cannabis users.'

https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/us-cannabis-and-alcohol-sales/

Cheers to that...

'One of the nation’s leading alcohol industry associations held a briefing on Capitol Hill on Friday to tell lawmakers and congressional staffers about its position on marijuana legalization.

The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) became the first major alcohol association to call for the end of federal cannabis prohibition in July. At last week’s briefing, the group reaffirmed that stance, emphasizing that the federal government should allow states to legalize marijuana without interference.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/major-alcohol-association-briefs-congress-on-marijuana-legalization/

'I got drunk on the fifty pesos. About nine that night, I ran out of money and went back to my apartment. I lay down and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw an Oriental face, the lips and nose eaten away by disease. The disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull crustacean eyes. Slowly, a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs, distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can no longer contain the crustacean horror that has grown inside it.
I watched curiously. "I got the horrors," I thought matter of factly.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'“We think the drinker and the cannabis consumer are the same person,” Mr. Bensch said. “There’s no reason they can’t smoke a joint and drink a beer at the same time.”'
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/dining/drinks/beer-cbd-marijuana-breweries.html

Notice here the difference between alcohol as an intoxicant for religious purposes and cannabis, peyote, psilocybin..all these other intoxicants were widely used specifically for religious and spiritual purposes and were highly compatible with the religions of the users..in fact cannabis has been compatible with Christianity right from the pre-Christian times up to its founder and beyond till relatively recent times when western distilled alcohol replaced everything...

'The modern Churches, with some exceptions among the Protestant denominations, tolerate alcohol; but, even the most tolerant have made no attempt to convert the drug to Christianity, or to sacrementalize its use. The pious drinker is forced to take his religion in one compartment, his religion-surrogate in another. And perhaps this is inevitable. Drinking cannot be sacrementalized except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair. The rights of Christianity are incompatible with even religious drunkenness. This does no harm to the distillers, but is very bad for Christianity.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'With a Saint Patrick’s Day weekend in sight, the occasion seemed right for the Hemp Business Journal to get into the holiday spirit with an update about the current state of hemp- and cannabis-infused beverages.

As detailed in a survey last October by New Frontier Data (parent company of the HBJ), nearly half (45%) of cannabis consumers who also drink expected to eventually replace at least some of their alcohol use with cannabis. For those who enjoy the taste and traditions yet worry about the health effects of alcohol, a new profusion of non-alcoholic, cannabis-infused beer and wines are offering some intriguing potential replacements (where legally available).'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/this-st-patricks-day-drink-options-offer-slainte-with-thc-and-cbd/

'The first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in Boston (not in Ireland) in 1737. Across the 282 years of parades since those origins, the holiday for the patron saint of Ireland has established itself as the third-most popular annual drinking day in the United States, where revelers consume an average of 4.2 alcoholic servings on the day, after Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday (4.6) and New Year’s Eve (4.4), according to Alcohol.org.

This weekend, as projected by WalletHub, 55% of Americans plan to celebrate the holiday and will spend a combined $5.6 billion (an average of $40) doing so. Nearly 1/3 (32%) of men and 1/5 (20%) of women say that they binge drink on the holiday, as defined by consuming either (by men) 5 or more, or (by women) 4 or more drinks over a two-hour period on a day when American revelers overall consume 152.5% more beer (and 819% more Guinness, specifically) than on an average day.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/on-st-patricks-day-signs-of-cannabis-displacing-alcoholic-beverages/

"In conclusion, we demonstrate that CBD treatment significantly attenuates liver injury induced by chronic plus binge alcohol in a mouse model and oxidative burst in human neutrophils. CBD ameliorates alcohol-induced liver injury by attenuating inflammatory response involving E-selectin expression and neutrophil recruitment, and consequent oxidative/nitrative stress, in addition to attenuation of the alcohol-induced hepatic metabolic dysregulation and steatosis. These beneficial effects, coupled with the proven safety of CBD in human clinical trials and its current orphan drug approval by FDA for various indications suggest that it may have therapeutic potential in liver disease associated with inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic dysregulation and steatosis."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10924-8

'Countless persons desire self-transcendence and would be glad to find it in church. But, alas, 'the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.' They take part in rites, they listen to sermons, they repeat prayers; but their thirst remains unassuaged. Disappointed, they turn to the bottle. For a time at least and in a kind of way, it works. Church may still be attended; but it is no more than the Musical Bank of Butler's Erewhon. God may still be acknowledged; but he is God only on a verbal level, only in a strict Pickwickian sense. The effective object of worship is the bottle and the sole religious experience is that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'I finally slept a little and woke up next morning with a terrific alcohol depression. Junk sickness, suspended by codeine and hop, numbed by weeks of constant drinking, came back on me full force. "I have to have some codeine," I thought.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Compared with those without medical cannabis recommendations, cannabis users with medical cannabis recommendations had 0.59 times fewer drinks/day, 0.44 times fewer occasions drinking 5+, and 0.78 times the average maximum number of drinks in one day (all ps < .05).'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30573025?dopt=Abstract

And while Hearst had paper in mind, plastic manufacturing companies joined the “Let’s get hemp banned” party to ensure that their petrochemical-based plastics had a leg up over bio-degradable hemp-made plastics. The alcohol and tobacco industries also contribute astronomical sums to fund the “Weed is a dangerous narcotic drug” canard with absolutely zero sense of irony and the pharma industry would prefer that you buy expensive pain killer drugs instead of chewing on some bhang .'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/rite-of-passage/article5643862.ece

'Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), co-founder of the anti-marijuana group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, spoke out against the legalization bill and sparred with lawmakers. At one point, he was asked whether he believes alcohol should be prohibited—and after hesitating to respond, he said he did not but that alcohol advertisements should be more tightly regulated.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/watch-new-jersey-lawmakers-debate-marijuana-legalization-ahead-of-critical-vote/

Cannabis and Christianity too, as more and more emerging evidence from the heart of Christian origins shows...

'We see, then, that Christianity and alcohol do not and cannot mix. Christianity and mescalin seem to be much more compatible. This has been demonstrated by many tribes of Indians, from Texas to as far north as Wisconsin. Among these tribes are to be found groups affiliated with the Native American Church, a sect whose principal rite is a kind of Early Christian Agape, or Love-Feast, where slices of peyote take the place of the sacremental bread and wine. These Native Americans regard the cactus as God's special gift to the Indians, and equate its effects with the workings of the divine Spirit.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

'Ike came back from the bathroom with the works and began cooking up a shot. He kept talking. "You're drinking and you're getting crazy. I hate to see you get off this stuff and on something worse. I know so many that quit the junk. A lot of them can't make it with Lupita. Fifteen pesos for a paper and it takes three to fix you. Right away they start in drinking and they don't last more than two or three years." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'I lay there trying to control the fear. I did not know much about uremic poisoning. A woman I knew slightly in Texas died of it after drinking a bottle of beer every hour, night and day, for two weeks. Rollins had told me about it. "She swelled up and turned sorta black and went into convulsions and died. The whole house smelled like piss!"' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953

'Professor J.S. Slotkin - one of the very few white men ever to have participated in the rites of a Peyotist congregation - says of his fellow worshippers that they are 'certainly not stupefied or drunk...They never get out of rhythm or fumble their words, as a drunken or stupified man would do...They are all quiet, courteous and considerate of one another. I have never been in any white man's house of worship where there is either so much religious feeling or decorum.' And what, we may ask, are these devout and well-behaved Peyotists experiencing? Not the mild sense of virtue which sustains the average Sunday churchgoer through ninety minutes of boredom. Not even those high feelings, inspired by thoughts of the Creator and the Redeemer, the Judge and the Comforter which animate the pious.'- The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.

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