so, are alcohol users more aggressive than marijuana users? that's floating around, right now. i may have perpetuated it myself a little, in musing that i hope that legalization converts some alcoholics into potheads, and pointing out the public health benefits. but, i actually think that legalization is likely to bust that myth.

to be clear: yes, alcohol is a more dangerous substance, if consumed excessively. marijuana doesn't produce blackouts, or damage reasoning skills the way that alcohol does. nor does it present the same kind of long term health problems.

but, ultimately, alcohol is a cns depressant. it's the stimulants - like cocaine - that pose the largest threats for violence. alcohol consumption is clearly tied to violence (correlation), but there's not really any good reason to tie alcohol use to violence (doesn't necessarily imply causation) the same way that there is to tie cocaine use to violence (it's a stimulant). so, what's going on here?

i think that what you're going to see come out of the legalization process is the deconstruction of this myth that alcohol users are more violent and marijuana users are less violent and the realization that alcohol is more often tied to violence for the simple reason that it is more readily available to violent people. your archetypal dumb jock can walk into a bar and pound a few, then look for somebody to fight. he doesn't need contacts or friends to find beer the same way that he does to find pot. once pot is as readily available to the archetypal dumb jock as alcohol, the rate of violence observed amongst marijuana users will no doubt find itself in alignment with that observed by alcohol users. long time users of both drugs in diverse situations will recognize this as obvious, because it was never the alcohol that made the dumb jock so dangerous in the first place. what makes the dumb jock dangerous is that he is dumb.

in the process, alcohol may experience somewhat of a revival in reputation.

i'm hard on alcohol, but i'm not shy to use it, because i know how to use it safely (despite the inaccurate claims of others). and, it can be used safely, nobody doubts this. see, a big part of this is my disposition, though. it should shock nobody to learn that i'm a passive drunk. but, it seems to be harder for people to understand that i'm a passive drunk because i'm opposed to violence when i'm sober. this shouldn't be hard to put together, but alcohol seems to have really taken a beating, lately.

i was at an underground party on saturday night and they were freely selling a substance that is supposed to be safer than alcohol. perhaps my eyes were lying to me. but, it seemed to me that the people that were only drinking were able to dance on their own with reasonable stamina, while the people inhaling this supposedly safer substance limped around looking like they had multiple sclerosis. i stopped and watched one guy for a good five or six minutes. he was clearly having the kind of motor difficulties that you would normally assign to somebody going through the advanced stages of dementia. i hope he didn't suffer permanent nerve damage.

my point is just that you need to look at context. you need to be careful with alcohol, especially if you are thin like i am: you need to consume it in small amounts over a long time, rather than all at once. but, it's not going to turn you into somebody that you aren't. once we have equal access to intoxication sources, we'll see those numbers even out and begin to realize that the root causes are underlying.