Is there a breathalyser test for marijuana? Or doesn't being high effect your driving? I'd say that would effect others.
No, just like there isn't a breathalyser test for being agitated, stressed or tired, all of which can adversely affect your driving. Fortunately, there are blood tests, and while they are more difficult to perform than breath tests, this problem is easily addressed by permitting police to perform random blood tests at their discretion. This is a very minor issue and has little bearing on the matter at hand.
Why do you think making cannabis legal will reduce drinking? It hasn't in the Netherlands and Portugal despite your assertion. Portugal drink way more than us Brits and by God, we drink a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita
That's a very very weird theory with no scientific backing at all. If you want to stop people drinking so much, just get bar staff to breathalyse customers and set a limit. Or raise the cost of alcohol. Legalising cannabis to reduce drinking is like banning guns to prevent obesity.
Oh boy, where do I start?
First, the fact that their alcohol consumption is high does not imply that it has not been reduced. Second, my point was not that cannabis had reduced the amount of drinking in Portugal, but rather that it has had a net positive impact on their society. In particular:
In the Portuguese case, the statistical indicators and key informant interviews that we have reviewed suggest that since decriminalization in July 2001, the following changes have occurred:
- small increases in reported illicit drug use amongst adults;
- reduced illicit drug use among problematic drug users and adolescents, at least since 2003;
- reduced burden of drug offenders on the criminal justice system;
- increased uptake of drug treatment;
- reduction in opiate-related deaths and infectious diseases;
- increases in the amounts of drugs seized by the authorities;
- reductions in the retail prices of drugs.
Whether we also see positive results with our social problems in Sydney remains to be seen. My point is that we don't know for certain what effect it will have until we try it.
Finally, I'm not suggesting that making cannabis legal will reduce drinking, only that it stands a chance of addressing our alcohol-related violence problem. There are any number of ways it could do that, one of which is a reduction in the amount of drinking, but another could simply be that its relaxant properties help to suppress the antisocial behaviour associated with alcohol. As I said, we don't know for certain until we try it.
People I know tend to just mix the two of them, which is stupid. Small sample size and all though.
Yeah, they will. Its not an alternative to drinking.
That depends entirely on what your motive for drinking is. The blanket statement that "its [sic] not an alternative to drinking" completely ignores the fact that other people might drink for reasons different than your own.
In my particular case, sometimes I have a drink just because I feel like unwinding, or want a buzz. In that case, I would likely be equally well satisfied by marijuana. As someone who has never taken cannabis, it's impossible to comment directly on what the after-effects are like, but I would be very interested in trying alternative ways of getting a buzz without alcohol's withdrawal symptoms.
Of course, there are also some people for whom it would not be an alternative to drinking, and that's perfectly fine because the point is not to prevent all alcohol consumption. Why is it so difficult to get this point across?