Dr Alain Joffe, MD, MPH, and Dr W. Samuel Yancy, MD, members of the Committee on Substance Abuse and Committee on Adolescence both asserted that “the morbidity, mortality, and economic costs to society associated with alcohol and tobacco use in the United States dwarf those associated with marijuana use.”
Alcohol abuse is a proven culprit of chronic and incurable liver diseases like hepatitis and liver cirrhosis. And to make matters worse, both can lead to liver cancer too. Newborns can acquire congenital birth defects because their mothers drank during their first trimester of pregnancy. In medicine, the causal link between alcohol and diseases caused by alcohol are so obvious and widely-known that medical specialists make diagnoses of some diseases and/or disorders with the term “alcohol” or “alcoholic” such as alcoholic hepatitis, fetal alcohol syndrome, or alcohol-related neurological disorders.
And the consequences of long term cigarette smoking are not any better compared to drinking alcohol. Smoking cigarettes has proven to be strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases and many types of lung cancer. For example, review the conclusion from a prospective study of three counties in Norway to see the consequences of smoking 1-4 cigarettes per day: “In both sexes, smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly …show more content…
The National Cannabis Industry Association is “the national trade association to represent the legal cannabis industry. That includes the four states where retail sale for recreational marijuana has been approved and the 23 states with medical marijuana laws on the books” (Doubek). And fighting for legalization has reached Washington D.C. And “[t]he libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator [i.e. Rand Paul] has been a critic of the war on drugs and was a co-sponsor, along with two Democrats, of a bill that would remove federal prohibitions on medical marijuana”
Alcohol abuse is a proven culprit of chronic and incurable liver diseases like hepatitis and liver cirrhosis. And to make matters worse, both can lead to liver cancer too. Newborns can acquire congenital birth defects because their mothers drank during their first trimester of pregnancy. In medicine, the causal link between alcohol and diseases caused by alcohol are so obvious and widely-known that medical specialists make diagnoses of some diseases and/or disorders with the term “alcohol” or “alcoholic” such as alcoholic hepatitis, fetal alcohol syndrome, or alcohol-related neurological disorders.
And the consequences of long term cigarette smoking are not any better compared to drinking alcohol. Smoking cigarettes has proven to be strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases and many types of lung cancer. For example, review the conclusion from a prospective study of three counties in Norway to see the consequences of smoking 1-4 cigarettes per day: “In both sexes, smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly …show more content…
The National Cannabis Industry Association is “the national trade association to represent the legal cannabis industry. That includes the four states where retail sale for recreational marijuana has been approved and the 23 states with medical marijuana laws on the books” (Doubek). And fighting for legalization has reached Washington D.C. And “[t]he libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator [i.e. Rand Paul] has been a critic of the war on drugs and was a co-sponsor, along with two Democrats, of a bill that would remove federal prohibitions on medical marijuana”