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Comment by Rinzler89 | Hacker News Reader

I dunno if alcohol is so much worse than weed in the grand scheme of things. A lot of Europeans, especially up north, are downright alcoholics by US standards, and yet their societies seem to be doing just fine, quite flourishing really.

For example Ireland has the highest GDP/Capita in EU and Finland has the best educated school students in the EU.

Not promoting alcohol consumption, but from my POV here in Europe, traditional alcoholic societies seem to have developed further than traditional stoner societies.

Just a shower though.

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Irish society being held up as a shining example to argue a point. I think the Irish could double their drinking and it wouldn't bring any more tech companies to the country. They're there for tax status, this is common knowledge especially in this part of the world.

Which societies do you consider "stoner"??

Tool/Cypress Hill audiences could qualify.

Well there was one at university that pretended to be about hill walking.

India and Jamaica come to mind, but one had their GDP drained from 23% to just 4% of global GDP by British colonialism and the other is a former slave colony so those examples might have rather more significant downward pressure on productivity other than cannabis

It is common in family/small types businesses to start drinking at the office after lunch, this is Sweden/Norway/Denmark/Finland. It is dark and is sucks, what else you gonna do?

"common" is a pretty big exaggeration.

The probability of being hurt or even just disturbed by someone else due to them being high on cannabis is far, far lower than the probability of being hurt by someone due to them being high on alcohol.

Work in a public facing role, especially at night or on weekends. Or even just drive around at night to see the difference.

What are a few examples of "traditional stoner societies," especially on a country scale?

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