Would you rather deal with someone high on cannabis or drunk on alcohol?
To collect data, visit all the hotels, restaurants, bars, police, security guards, and entertainment venues in your area and ask all the front line employees this question. Or even who you would rather drive around.
I guarantee everyone would rather deal with someone high on cannabis, who might ask for extra snacks or drive slow and be unlikely to go on a belligerent tirade or get physical.
In terms of other societal risks, I have not heard of a cannabis addict beating their spouse or children yet.
It's not even comparable. You an ignore the fact that far more people use Alcohol regularly, that it has countless other deleterious health affects and just look at pure death rates directly attributable to Alcohol. It's just not even in the same universe.
>(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The issue is, which is worse for society.
Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize you aren't talking about the same thing.
> This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't actually believe studies can reliably be understood by anyone other than those who conducted it and their immediate peers in the field.
A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be, "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a definitive study. That doesn't seem fair.
Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you that you are asking me to do.
> Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll note that considering this a logical statement is really flawed.
I can't understand what you are saying here.
> You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for both sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in and of itself.
Just trying to cut off the expected "studies show X" comments before they get started. Because if studies aren't definitive, which they rarely are, there isn't any point in raising that. And a simpler way to explain this is "studies conflict."
My point was that you are actually very rarely in the case that studies are in conflict to the point that the best you can do is personal experience. It's the exception, not the rule.
To paraphrase Churchill: science is the worst system we have for understanding these sorts of things, except for all the others.
> My point was that you are actually very rarely in the case that studies are in conflict to the point that the best you can do is personal experience
I didn't make my point very clearly, but my actual view is that only the researchers who perform a study and their immediate scientific peers are able to determine whether a study is reliable and what conclusions can actually be drawn from it. I say this as someone who worked in academic research.
> To paraphrase Churchill: science is the worst system we have for understanding these sorts of things, except for all the others.
Preaching to the choir, there. I'm not arguing against science.
I don't think this is correct, personally.
(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)