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In reply to the discussion: Trump seeks to cut restrictions on marijuana through planned order [View all]AZJonnie
(2,713 posts)Alcohol is very reasonably argued to be a poison. When you're drunk, it's because you've poisoned yourself. And chronic abuse of it is deleterious to pretty much every cell in your body in some way, obviously your liver in particular, but there is almost no part of the body that is not at least annoyed and irritated by alcohol. It is literally terrible for you. Obviously that effect is highly dose-dependent and regularity-dependent, just like the health effects of everything. It's always about "concentrations".
OTOH, the only thing about THC is that it can make people with certain body/brain chemistry pretty uncomfortably "paranoid", whereas that doesn't really happen with alcohol. So then if you react badly in that way, you just don't use it because it's not fun (recreationally, any way). And there are some studies that suggest people with underlying mental health issues (chemical imbalances in the brain IOW) may have those be exacerbated with THC use, but that's probably also true of any drug that gets people high, including alcohol
But THC use is associated with virtually zero statistically-provable health problems, esp. if taken orally. Which is wildly different than alcohol, which absolutely 100%, is bad for your body and brain, with many, many known acute health problems associated with regular use, some of them leading to early death when its abused for a long period.
On a related note, if you could somehow take away the risk of acute overdose and their addictive properties, opioids (if pure and not used by IV, I mean) are also far safer health-wise than alcohol. What I mean is there's no known/proven harm to one's health caused by using opioids, they're almost entirely innocuous in terms of harming your organs, including your brain. UNLESS you take too much (acutely), or you get addicted and your behavior becomes hazardous to your well-being, you could take opioids all day every day, and it would never kill you directly (though you would be well-advised to take in some daily fiber if you were doing so). UNLIKE alcohol.