Author: Alex Thompson

No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

Drinking alcohol may increase your risk of certain cancers, especially mouth and throat cancer. Characterized by abnormally high blood sugar, type 2 diabetes is caused by a reduced uptake of glucose, or blood sugar, by your cells — a phenomenon known as insulin resistance. There are several possible reasons for the beneficial effects of drinking moderately. It is a broad category of diseases, the most common of which are coronary heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes.

Packing your hurricane go bag? Make provisions for your health

1. At Vox, our mission is to explain the world, so we can all help shape it.
2. “Combined use of mushrooms with alcohol and use within risky or unfamiliar settings increase the risks of harm,” the founder of the Global Drug Survey, addiction psychiatrist Adam Winstock, told Olivia Solon at The Guardian.
3. The way you consume weed can have a big impact on its short- and long-term effects.
4. King said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two.

Unlike alcohol, Baler said, the effects of chronic marijuana use are not as well established. Animal studies have indicated some possible impact on reproduction. Additionally, there is evidence marijuana can worsen psychiatric issues for people who are predisposed to them, or bring them on at a younger age.

Heavy drinking causes health problems — regardless of the type of beverage. For example, it can cause liver damage — including cirrhosis — brain damage, heart failure, diabetes, cancer and susceptibility to infections (9, 54, 58, 72, 73, 74). Numerous factors can predispose people to problematic drinking, such as family history, social environment, mental health and genetics.

Recent studies on alcohol and health

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. 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. Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamines, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects and harm to others, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine.

Health Challenges

The research on other health effects of marijuana is inconclusive but should warrant some caution. One study linked the use of potent marijuana to psychotic disorders, but other studies suggest people with psychotic disorders may be predisposed to pot use. Research on whether smoked marijuana causes lung disease or cancer has yielded conflicting results, with studies that control for tobacco smoking finding no significant effect from marijuana on lung cancer risk.

Your liver’s role

Caulkins and Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland, suggested a model in which all the major risks of drugs are drawn out and each drug is ranked within those categories. So heroin would be at or near the top for mortality, alcohol would be at or near the top for cause of violent crime, and tobacco would be at the top for long-term health risks. But there wouldn’t be a single ranking for all the drugs’ harms. The idea is lawmakers could look at this model to help decide on an individual basis which policies are better for each drug.

Health Alerts from Harvard Medical School

Before getting into comparing alcohol and weed, it’s important to understand some of the factors that make the comparison tricky. At the other end of the chart, methamphetamine, synthetic cannabis, and alcohol carried the most risk of a trip to the local emergency ward, leaving MDMA (ecstasy) and amphetamines in the middle of the drug safety table. All of this helps prove that marijuana isn’t totally harmless — and some of its risks are likely unknown. “There are segments of the population that want to bypass the entire process, grabbing this nugget of truth … and claiming smoking marijuana can be good for your health and have medical uses,” Baler said. “Researchers are working around the clock to try to identify the ingredients in marijuana that have potential,” to benefit human health, Baler said.

Alcohol and Health: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In fact — while drinking beer regularly may cause an increase in waist circumference — the well-known “beer belly” — wine consumption may have the opposite effect (31, 35, 36). Excessive alcohol consumption can have numerous adverse effects on your brain. Ethanol, the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks, is generally referred to as “alcohol.” It can have powerful effects on your mental state.

Even light alcohol consumption — up to one drink per day — is linked to a 20% increased risk of mouth and throat cancer (59, 60). As with the short-term effects of alcohol and weed, the long-term effects differ from person to person. 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.

However, studies investigating the link between alcohol and weight have provided inconsistent results (31). People may start abusing alcohol due to depression or become depressed by abusing alcohol. By reducing self-consciousness and shyness, alcohol may encourage people to act without inhibition.