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Comment by loteck | Hacker News Reader

Should cannabis use should be treated any differently by societies or governments than alcohol use? I'm struggling to come up with any exceptions.

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Given that cannabis is far less dangerous than alcohol, both to the person having cannabis and to those nearby them, I think it should be treated very differently indeed! Alcohol use is responsible for like 90,000 deaths per year in the USA and cannabis close to 0 (there may be some related car accidents, I don't know, but no direct deaths and far fewer related ones).

Cannabis should be far more acceptable to use in modern society than alcohol. Persons having cannabis are much less likely to cause violence than those with alcohol, and are much more likely to think calmly about ways to improve the world.

I can think of 1000s more reasons why cannabis should be treated differently than alcohol by our governments and societies!

It should definitely be treated as more benign than alcohol. Cannabis not only doesn't impair you as much as alcohol (e.g. balance and coordination), it's also much safer. The LD50 for alcohol is of the same order of magnitude as the amount you need to get blackout drunk. The LD50 for cannabis is orders of magnitude higher than the amount it takes to put you to bed.

The exception here is probably with edibles. It would be far easier to OD on marijuana by ingesting concentrated edibles than it would be to OD on alcohol by ingesting shots. The irony is that edibles are probably a safer way to ingest cannabis (e.g. compared to smoking the flowers) assuming you take a normal dose.

It really depends, but I feel less able to focus mentally with ANY weedover than DECENT hangover.

Can feel effects even 2 days after smoking, not that they matter much more developing. Gathering client requirements day after smoking is near impossible.

Not even sure why lethal dose matters here. Did you mean half life?

Edit: cannabis half life is anywhere from 1 to 10 days. Considering caffeine's 5-6 hours and fact people usually stay away from coffee after 3PM - it's very realistic to feel cannabis for days after use.

This is your problem when you cannot use it responsibly. (E.g. dosage, some people are sensitive.)

The employer can always just fire you for being unable to perform job duties regardless of cannabis laws, if it is a repeat incident. They cannot just use cannabis use alone or drug test results to make an argument.

Interestingly enough, mildly drunk or hangover professional drivers routinely cause accidents which even sometimes kill people.

The LD50 is pretty important if we're evaluating the safety of the drug, especially if it's easy to ingest that amount.

> cannabis half life is anywhere from 1 to 10 days. Considering caffeine's 5-6 hours and fact people usually stay away from coffee after 3PM - it's very realistic to feel cannabis for days after use.

The duration of psycho-effects is not the same thing as the half-life. The half-life of cannabinoids is not too important, as the compounds are absorbed by fatty acids and released slowly over time into the body. The actual high for a typical dose lasts a few hours; you might feel groggy for about a day, maybe two if you're an infrequent user. As for your personal experience, I know people who can function normally in conversation on weed. Personally, I can't, but other things like driving and coordination tasks are no problem for me.

Downvote me to oblivion on this - I don't care. If you drive while high you are threatening the lives of others just for kicks. You don't want that blood on your conscience if something goes wrong. No your reaction times, focus, and judgement are not the same. They just aren't. I am not anti-marijuana by any stretch but there is a time and a place for it. Driving is not that time.

Have you ever driven without getting a full night's sleep? Wouldn't you consider that the same kind of offense since it reduces your reaction time and focus?

I'd like to see some data on the increased risks of driving while under the influence of marijuana before I lump it in with alcohol but saying that ANY reduction in focus or coordination means you are a threat to other drivers doesn't seem rational as long as you are still above a minimum threshold.

"Acute cannabis consumption nearly doubles the risk of a collision resulting in serious injury or death; this increase was most evident for studies of high quality, case-control studies, and studies of fatal collisions" - https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e536

I don't hate weed. Quite the contrary! But the whole point of a smoke is to put you in a different place and that place is not conducive to the safety of those around you while steering two tons of metal at 70MPH. I'll take us off on a different and probably unpopular tangent - if you say that marijuana makes absolutely no difference to your baseline judgement, reflexes, focus, etc... then you might be hitting the pipe a bit too often (i.e., massive tolerance and habituation) and it's maybe time to consider scaling back.

"Cannabis not only doesn't impair you as much as alcohol (e.g. balance and coordination), it's also much safer."

Safer, sure. But man, I can tell you many instances where I definitely took a good 40-IQ hit after smoking. Definitely impaired!

To me, the difference is that with marijuana, you’re aware of the impairment more and tend to be more careful (eg not drive).

Yeah weed makes you pretty docile too, the only exception I've seen are people with proper mental issues (and those should stay away from any mind-altering stuff).

How many times have you seen drunken people get aggressive and start fights ie in bars, or do domestic violence? Stoners would just laugh hard and say something deeply incomprehensible to sober person

At least where I live - Spain - there are a good number of traffic accident deaths that test positive for cannabis [1]. Not as high as alcohol, but it's the number one illegal drug ahead of cocaine.

[1] http://revista.dgt.es/es/noticias/nacional/2018/07JULIO/0723...

If alcohol was invented today, it wouldn't be approved for sale, as it's a Group 1 carcinogen.

I suppose the differences in psychoactivity might be relevant. Alcohol has generally a predictable intoxication curve while as marijuana can have quite variable effects at a given dosage. Basically, I might argue that marijuana’s “safe” dose is harder to quantify. However, that being said, they should perhaps be treated equally and certainly ought to be a no factor when it comes to employment screening for non safety sensitive positions.

I think the main difference is in testing; alcohol disappears in days, cannabis in weeks-months.

If your question is, "can we trust Z to show up 20 days a month", an alcohol test might not be a bad one. If your candidate can't be sober for a pre-defined period of a few days, that might merit following up on.

But let's be honest, the laws requiring these tests are usually pork-barrel horseshit anyways.

Alcohol can be detected in hair for up to 90 days.

The impairment is really just acting goofy more than anything, and if you are conscious of that fact you can put on sunglasses and non one would be any the wiser, as no random person will know how goofy you normally act. I'm not convinced it really affects reaction time significantly, based on my anectdata from gaming, playing sports, and going for runs.

Your comment is ambiguous here, but this ban is giving marijuana special treatment. It's completely legal to test your employees for e.g. alcohol use and refuse to hire them if they do use it. By taking away the ability to even test for marijuana, it gives marijuana use a special status.

There's a difference between these tests (has this person smoked weed at any point in the last month, roughly?) and breathalyzer tests (is this person currently drunk?)

Showing up to work drunk vs. showing up to work two weeks after smoking weed are relatively different scenarios, to say the least.

Hair tests for alcohol indicates average consumption over a period of months. It can also be detected using blood/urine tests over shorter periods of time, but similarly testing for usage rather than 'are you drunk right now' which hardly needs a test.

It has secondhand smoke problems (like tobacco) which alcohol does not

THC has many more delivery methods than smoking leaf.

Edibles. Tinctures. Vapes. Salves.

Your argument isn’t very informed.

A vape still produces vapor though which can be absorbed by strangers.

Also smoking leaf is the most common method by far

Only because thats usually how you end up with it in countries where its illegal. Common Joe doesn't have the skills and equipment to turn it to something non-harmful for consumption. I am amazed how quickly in US the oil vaping industry had developed, and how good the products are compared to old school consumption.

Compared to Netherland where this is cca legal for many years, and you can still only buy plants or cakes (which isn't ideal for quite a few reasons, ie hard to get right dosage first time). In fact, oil vaping cartridges are illegal there (no sense whatsoever, you can buy hashish which can be very potent).

I can guarantee you, tons of people who don't smoke cigarettes vastly prefer consumption with 0 carcinogens from burning the plant.

I haven't read any studies in this. Vapor absorbed by strangers must be extremely low or this would be a bigger issue.

>THC has many more delivery methods than smoking leaf.

So does nicotine. That doesn't change the fact that most people smoke it making second hand smoke an issue.

Thank you for pointing this out. We decided years ago that people shouldn't be involuntarily exposed to smoke, which is carcinogenic and psychoactive. People were fine with it for tobacco, because smoking isn't really "cool" any more. Now all the young, "cool" people want different rules so they can smoke whenever and wherever they want to.

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