<p>Ultimately, there are restrictions and laws against substance use when making it legal and unrestricted causes more harm than good. It’s an issue to be revisited and is. Whether the right decision is made on it is a whole other story. </p>
<p>That pot is illegal in most places does make it used less. There are some who do abide by the law. Those who do use it are more secretive about it and do not use it as much since getting it is not as easy as walking into a store and buying it. IT can involve a less than savory process because it is illegal. So when it becomes legal, there will be more of it used and we can then assess how it stands with alcohol and booze in terms of damages.</p>
<p>One of the challenges of comparing pot to alcohol is that when you test someone via a breathalizer for alcohol you can immediately determine an apparent degree of intoxication. Alcohol is processed by the liver at a rate of approximately 1 ounce per hour. You can drink quite heavily and a day later test negative. Pot stays in the system much longer as it’s properties are fat soluable typically up to a week for occasional usage and possibly a month for a chronic user. Woman tend to keep it in their system longer than men as they have a higher proportion of body fat than men. What this means is that while two people could both test positive for pot one could have smoked it a few days ago and have no intoxicating affects and another could be quite high having smoked within a few hours. There are tests to determine levels in the blood stream but I don’t believe they predict intoxication.</p>
<p>The rules for the military about drug use are already more strict then in the private sector for a lot of good reasons. The recent vote will make no difference there. And has been mentioned previously, federal laws still prohibit the use of marijuana, so this vote sounds more like a challenge from a legality standpoint between state and federal laws.</p>
<p>None of that will change anything about the existing rules governing the military.</p>
<p>The topic of whether or not marijuana should/should not be legal is a different topic from discussing the implications at the state level about the recent voting results.</p>
<p>“In practice, age limits would be circumvented by the underage using fake IDs or getting their older friends or relatives to buy for them, like with alcohol and tobacco.”</p>
<p>We actually have seen some significant changes in drug-dealing behavior in recent years. It used to be that heroin and cocaine dealers, prescription opiate dealers, and marijuana dealers were different people. It is now much more common for drug-dealers who “serve” underage communities to be one-stop shops. This is especially true in rural or exurban areas. </p>
<p>My own view is that legalizing marijuana is not without negative consequences. I just happen to think that keeping it illegal has more of them.</p>
<p>^^akin to alcohol and tobacco. It would be an interesting exercise if alcohol would be dropped back to 18, I am of the personal opinion that it would cut down on binge drinking which to me is a far worse problem than kids getting high, but of course my age has much to do with that since 18 was the legal age when I was growing up and pot was everywhere. Binge drinking, at least as much as I could tell, was far less prevalent – why power drink before heading out if you can stop and have a drink when you want if you want.</p>
<p>Actually, we have data on the 18-year drinking age. It doesn’t work. One of the reasons it doesn’t work is that 18-year-old high school kids start regularly supplying alcohol to 14-year-olds. Teen drinking is now well lower than it was when the drinking age was 18. (And binge drinking is far higher in countries with lower drinking ages.) However - it is also true that, while the overall data don’t show it, binge drinking among 18-21 year olds at colleges is likely higher. This has more to do with the change in beverage choices (alcopops, hard lemonade, and the so-called “malt beverages” - which are simply a legal fiction, as they really aren’t malt beverages at all), than anything to do with the age thing.</p>
<p>I read somewhere that the 21 drinking age has lowered rates of alcohol related car accidents, which was its purpose. However, it has led to an increase in binge drinking on campuses, because under-21 students now feel the need to “pre-party” or “power drink” before they go out in public. I don’t think it’s just down to the choice of beverage. There doesn’t seem to be any behavioral norm among college students anymore that you should be able to hold your liquor. In my day there was, even though we had more “drinking rights.”</p>
<p>I see recreational pot use among middle-aged people as kind of juvenile. I don’t anyone my age who still uses it. I can’t see how you can really hold down a professional career and raise a family while habitually using it. It seems to sap ambition and mental acuity in a way that moderate alcohol use does not. I have no scientific evidence of this; it’s just my observation. I’d be interested in others’ perspectives.</p>
<p>“I read somewhere that the 21 drinking age has lowered rates of alcohol related car accidents, which was its purpose. However, it has led to an increase in binge drinking on campuses, because under-21 students now feel the need to “pre-party” or “power drink” before they go out in public.”</p>
<p>It’s an interesting idea, but there is no statistical evidence for it. We have campus binge drinking numbers for the last 37 years through Monitoring the Future. Binge drinking on campus as a statistical matter has not increased.</p>
<p>However, what seems to have increased is the amount drunk by binge drinkers. As, I’ve previously noted, the average four-drinking NON-binge drinker actually, on average had five, and each drink was 1.8X a standard drink, meaning s/he had nine. This doesn’t happen often with beer, which comes in cans and bottles, and is driven by change in beverage choice.</p>
<p>I also blame those STUPID flavored vodkas, shots etc. at least in the 70s all you had was Boonsfarm and I never drank that. Come to think of it at 18-21 none of us had enough money to afford to drink Vodka. If the federal government wants to do something good for the country, lower the drinking age and pass a law that alcohol manufacturers can’t add flavor to hard liquor. It’s no wonder ignorant kids get sick drunk…they think they are drinking a juice box.</p>
<p>NJSue I think you’d be fairly surprised how many educated 50+ people smoke pot occasionally. They probably aren’t running around every day stoned out of their minds…but…</p>