I'm sorry but I can't agree with you at all. Both alcohol and pot are drugs. If abused they are both lethal.

 

we are on a monte forum so im not going to get into it but the documented consequences when you compare the two are night and day. i dont know anybody who wants to fight,drive fast or reckless,rape,murder,loses there liver,wallet,car,home,mind the list goes on while smoking marijuana.all drugs including alcohol are bad if abused. all im saying is you will hear the words alcohol realated on the news a whole hell of alot more than you will hear marijuana related. to each his own we all have all sorts of things offered to us throughout our lives. we all have a choice to say yes or no. the choice to say that leaves us once we are addicted. the world is cruel and education on all drugs is our best defense. but because we live in this world we will always have a choice.

 

Don't get too into it

 

few words! well said!!

 

Back in the twenties we tried prohibition and we all know how well that worked. When the governments comes in and drafts a law that supersedes what should be a family decision we have problems. There is always going to be some idiot who takes things to an extreme. Case is point is Casey Anthony. If we are to believe hers story, her daughter disappeared and she waited a month to inform anybody about the missing child. Now the state of Florida is trying to draft legislation state defines how long a parent can wait before calling the cops and reporting the child missing.
Everything in our country for our youth is a rite of passage. Examples; ok Jonny when you get this tall you can ride this ride, when you turn seven you can stay up past dark, when you turn fifteen you can date; when you turn sixteen you can drive, when you turn eighteen you can join the service, when you turn twenty-one you can drink. Some of these are set by parents, some by society, and some by lawmakers. Parents should know their kids better than anyone else and should best know when their child is mature enough to do these things.
Let's look at driving for a moment. The legal driving age in most states is six-teen, yet in many rural areas on the farm we have kids as young as nine or ten operating motor vehicles on the farm. If this child can safely operate a car or pickup truck on the farm I would think they would be just as safe on the public roads. Now on the other hand you have some teens that first. Drove at sixteen and after six months of driving have had a hand full of tickets and totaled three cars. The difference between these two is that the farm kid was taught by his parents the safe operation of the motor vehicle and has a respect for the equipment. This child most likely won't be a terror on the roads when he does get his license. The other kid never learned those lessons. The same used to be done with alcohol before we instituted drinking ages. This is also the way it is in many foreign countries where there is no drinking age.

Duane I am no expert on alcohol. I can only speak from my own personal experience. I can also tell you that what we are doing now doesn't work. Some of the research I have done in the past suggests that the trigger in the brain that craves alcohol non stop gets triggered from the massive influx of alcohol to the brain during binge drinking or drinking to get drunk. So again if our young people are taught a healthy respect for alcohol we won't have that type of drinking. This would account for why we have so much alcohol abuse on college campuses. Let's remove alcohol from the list of rites of passage. By doing so we remove the want and need to abuse it. There are always going to be a few who do so anyway just like with everything else.

 

Don't worry Mike. We have had controversial threads before and we were all respectful of one anothers opinions even though we don't all agree. I know that there will be others that don't agree with me. I knew it before I posted, but it should bring out some healthy dialog.

 

We will agree to disagree. One point I would like to point out though is that alcohol is legal and pot isn't. I tried pot a few times in my teens and didn't see what the fascination is with it. I also don't agree that it should be illegal. It should be a personal choice to use or not use but also used with the same respect that should be given alcohol.

 

The whole European mentality is different. I'm not sure changes to the laws will be effective due to the American mentality.

 

Kerry I am aware that the Europeans view things differently than we do here. Time changes thinking. We Americans are still ingrained with the original Puritan thinking that arrived on the mayflower. I'm not saying that this is wrong but we hake a big deal out of things the rest of the world doesn't have an issue with. An example are unisex rest rooms.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you Gregg, I just don't know what the solution is. I will vote for you though when you make that presidential run.
I find it funny that Pennsylvania has some of the most restrictive alcohol sales laws in the country, but we still have as many problems as any other state. I think I even saw a study where alcoholism is on the high side here compared to most (but not all) other parts of the country.