LDs At Their Best: Legalise Cannabis/Ban Smoking

I don't need to drink alcohol, I never get drunk. Like many people I like the taste of the occasional small drink and never drink to the level of psychoactive effect the cannabis users I've known have habitually sought. FWIW am only half way through the crate of Peroni Red we bought in May.

The latter is certainly true of cannabis users. But drinking alcohol for the taste is often an acquired taste that comes in later life. Most people I have ever known drink alcohol for the effect too, though not necessarily getting blind drunk, but often enough just to feel mellow.

I would not drink just one can because it would seem pointless. If I were going to do that I would rather just have a cup of tea. I usually drink two to four cans on the rare occasions when I have a drink just to feel relaxed and mellow. I have probably only drank 6 cans in total this year so far and only drink lager, not the hard stuff anymore. Though PD is impacting my memory so i could conceivably have forgotten other times.

When it comes to recreational use of most things, moderate users when young and childless tend to indulge mostly on weekend evenings - assuming they work Monday to Friday. People who are constantly stoned or half drunk have a problem if they continue in this vein for long. As they settle down with someone and have kids, the responsible ones barely partake at all anymore unless they have sorted out a babysitter. With both cannabis and alcohol users there is a distinction between the problem users and the more responsible recreational ones. I have known alcoholics and cannabis smokers who were constantly pissed or stoned even at work. The problem drinkers usually lost their jobs and hit rock bottom more quickly than the stoners, simply because it is easier to function with some semblance of normality when stoned. It can be less obvious when someone is stoned than when they are drunk.

A stoned person might move more slowly and be far less engaged conversationally and might have droopy eyelids, but this is not always obvious to most people. A stoned person can still walk in a straight line, still handle familiar tasks requiring some dexterity and does not exhibit slurred speech, though he will be far less sharp of mind and far less alert. But this might not be visually obvious. I have known people who held down jobs for years whilst stoned, but ill advised obviously. A stoned person is most obviously stoned when he first smokes a spliff because he can feel euphoric, have a stupid grin on his face, possibly finding the most ridiculous things funny and looking like he is away with the fairies. A newly stoned person is almost as easy to spot as a drunk. But someone who is continuously stoned is rarely quite so obvious.

Paradoxically this makes problem stoners much harder to spot than recreational ones, which is the opposite of the situation with alcohol abusers.

Maybe that's just the ones you noticed most.  While I've known a few heavy drinkers incl two I worked with I'd say were alcoholics, they are the ones I remember and who knows how many hundreds maybe thousands of people I've known that drink.  

The ONS tells us that ~30 million adults in the UK drink and only about a third of them ever drink the equivalent of 3 pints or more at a time link.
    

I agree that drinking to excess is a problem. But it's readily detectable (on the breath), consumption of skunk cannabis orally is not.

I'm referring to stopping them getting in the drivers seat in the first place.

And I say again: the police cannot smell cannabis taken orally

Very sorry to hear about your sister, Zany