Author: Alex Thompson

Marijuana vs Alcohol: Which Is Really Worse for Your Health?

More and more young people are turning away from alcohol, according to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The short-term effects of weed and alcohol differ from person to person. In addition to memory loss and cognitive impairment, research on whether these effects are lasting is still equivocal. If given the choice, over two-thirds of marijuana users would vote to make it legal.

Public health researchers have said studying rates of injuries, accidents, mental illness and teen use in the wake of the new laws will lead to a better understanding of marijuana’s public health effects. “How much you’re impaired depends on the person, and how much you smoke,” Baler said. Because some people are stoned a lot of the time, while others may use marijuana only on weekends, the health effects become difficult to generalize. But while early studies showed some evidence linking marijuana to lung cancer, subsequent studies have debunked that association. While both are intoxicants used recreationally, their legality, patterns of use and long-term effects on the body make the two drugs difficult to compare.

Potential for misuse

The drug policy experts I talked to about Nutt’s study generally agreed that his style of analysis and ranking misses some of the nuance behind the harm of certain drugs. It’s possible to develop an emotional and/or physical dependence on both substances. Generally speaking, weed tends to come with fewer risks than alcohol, but there are a lot of factors to consider. Plus, they’re unique substances that produce different effects, which makes side-by-side comparisons difficult. One argument I often hear is that many more people end up in the emergency room after drinking alcohol than smoking pot—and that’s true. But the reason for that is because many more people in this country drink alcohol than smoke pot.

The question policy experts typically ask isn’t which drug is more dangerous, but how marijuana and alcohol should be treated through policy as individual drugs with their own set of unique, complicated risks. That doesn’t mean just legalization or prohibition, but regulation, taxes, and education as well. Although drug policy experts generally don’t dispute the assertion that alcohol is more dangerous than pot, the study, led by British researcher David Nutt, is quite controversial. Experts see the rankings as deeply flawed, largely because they present the harms that come from drugs in a rather crude, one-dimensional manner. There are limited funds in the public coffer for minimizing the damage of people’s recreational substance use, so focusing on the substance that does the most damage might make sense, Hutchison said.

In contrast, “we don’t see any statistically significant effects of cannabis on gray matter or white matter,” Hutchison said. A small percentage of adolescents drink to cope (e.g., to forget about troubles), and these people are more likely to drink alone, develop drinking problems, or overuse alcohol. There are, however, a number of frequent reasons why kids begin to experiment with drugs or alcohol in the first place. More than 37% of participants admitted to using marijuana to help them sleep.

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Health risks are just one way to measure whether marijuana is safer than alcohol. While pot doesn’t seem to cause organ failure or fatal overdoses, alcohol kills more than 29,000 people each year due to liver disease and other forms of poisoning. There’s also this perception that it’s extremely rare to get addicted to marijuana, but that’s a myth. There’s research to show that 30% of people who use marijuana are going to develop an addiction problem. Addiction is not about the amount of a substance that you drink or smoke.

Marijuana usage issues have been linked to dependence and withdrawal symptoms, which can make people irritated, weary, restless, and physically uncomfortable after they stop using it. Alcohol, on the other hand, was seen as more addictive by both the men and women polled. Not everyone reacts to marijuana, alcohol, or a combination of the two in the same manner, and many circumstances influence how a person reacts. Nonetheless, being aware of the potential implications of mixing these medications is beneficial.

1. According to a study on marijuana use and intimate partner violence conducted by the University of Michigan, couples who used marijuana had lower rates of intimate relationship violence throughout the first nine years of their marriage.
2. There are, however, a number of frequent reasons why kids begin to experiment with drugs or alcohol in the first place.
3. The question of whether alcohol or marijuana is worse for health is being debated once again, this time, sparked by comments that President Barack Obama made in a recent interview with The New Yorker magazine.
4. “The main risk of cannabis is losing control of your cannabis intake,” Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at UCLA, said.

Sian Ferguson is a freelance health and cannabis writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She’s passionate about empowering readers to take care of their mental and physical health through science-based, empathetically delivered information. Weed seems to have fewer long-term risks than alcohol, but again, there’s a huge discrepancy in the amount of research on weed compared with alcohol. The immediate effects of weed can vary quite a bit from person to person.

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People’s responses to each substance can vary greatly, so what seems safer for one person might not work for someone else. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), 15 million people in the United States deal with it. For those seeking addiction treatment for themselves or a loved one, our calls are confidential and are available for 24/7 help.

A few drugs are enormously dangerous in the short-term but not the long-term (heroin), or vice versa (tobacco). And looking at deaths or other harms caused by certain drugs doesn’t always account for substances, such as prescription medications, that are often mixed with others, making them more deadly or harmful than they would be alone. The other factor that makes it hard to answer this question is the relative lack of studies on the negative health effects of weed.

For others, drug addiction develops with exposure to prescribed medications or acquiring medications from a friend or relative who has been prescribed the medication, particularly with opioids. If only one could be legalized, more than half of people would choose marijuana over alcohol. The topic of discussion seems to keep on resurfacing, with fresh research being published and more laws being passed to legalize the recreational and therapeutic use of marijuana. “Researchers are working around the clock to try to identify the ingredients in marijuana that have potential,” to benefit human health, Baler said.

Nutt acknowledges these problems, but argues that his analysis provides value to policymakers. “I believe we have provided the best currently available analysis of an extremely complex multifaceted data set.” This may seem like a petty academic squabble, but it’s quite important as researchers and lawmakers try to advance more scientific approaches to drug policy. Finding the best method to evaluate the risks of drugs is much more complicated than assigning numeric rankings. Both weed and alcohol can carry a potential for misuse and addiction, but this appears to be more common with alcohol. The research shouldn’t be taken as the be-all and end-all in the great debate over whether cannabis is bad for the brain.

There are also more than 100 different cannabinoids, which are substances found in the cannabis plant. So, the answer to that question may depend on which strain of cannabis you’re smoking or what mix of cannabinoids are in it. Marijuana, weed, pot, dope, and grass are all terms used to describe marijuana.