Guess you'll have to include me in that category Bowser but you know what pal, in this case experience with multiple sources of brain manipulation gives one a bit of an insight into the pros and cons of each.

I fully acknowledge there are dangers to overuse and abuse of any substance. I know there are risks to the use of marijuana especially to people that are prone to addiction of any kind. We're on the same page there.

However, I firmly believe your immersion into the world of the worst of the pot users has clouded your objectivity into the relative dangers for the majority of the public that does not have a proclivity towards real substance abuse.

The primary reasons I believe pot much safer than alcohol has to do with what it does not do to you.

Unlike alcohol pot does not:

1. Make you macho and violent. I have experienced that phenomena when drunk but have never felt like fighting or hurting anyone on marijuana. If anything, the edge of paranoia it gives makes your avoid conflict.

2. Make you lose your reaction time and coordination. I have played extreme athletic sports high on pot and although had a hard time remembering the score from time to time, saw no real diminished ability of hand/eye coordination or reaction time. When driving (although that is a stupid decision) and faced with an immediate need to react quickly to stimuli, my brain seemed to always make the proper choices and I have avoided problems as well as I would have straight. On alcohol however I have seen how severely one's coordination and abilities are impaired. I can guarantee you that if usage levels of drivers were identical between pot and alcohol, the accident rate from alcohol would greatly exceed that of the pot smokers.

3. Make you lose creativity. It enhances it. Alcohol can certainly help free up insecurities which can block creativity but I have never felt like writing a song or taking photographs when drunk. Often when inebriated, my entire focus is something more basic and one-dimensional like sex. Not that there's anything wrong with that but it leads to some very regrettable situations at times.

4. Ruin your next day. Although the after-effects of pot can cause some lethargy and spaciness, never have I experienced the complete loss of days with the debilitating headaches, nausea, and digestive problems that alcohol often create.

I'm sorry Bowser but your visceral rants against the evils of pot sound almost as bizarre as watching the old film "Reefer Madness". Anyone with real brain addled experience with both pot and alcohol knows that although both can be bad if used in excess, alcohol far surpasses in it's potential for destroying lives completely.

That said, I don't really use pot anymore but not because I'm worried about the risks to my mental and physical health. Instead it's simply because of its illegality and the message it would send my children who would have their lives ruined by those draconian laws if they experimented and got caught. If fact, because I no longer smoke pot, I probably use alcohol in greater quantities than I should and it probably is reducing my life much more than if I was a chronic marijuana user.

I also applaud your work with substance abusers but don't let your experience with a small subset of humanity cloud your view of true human behavior. The problems you saw with pot were not the drug but people with extreme addictive personalities. Were alcohol and marijuana not around they would find something else they allowed to control their lives.

Art