Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!pilot.njin.net!psuvax1!psuvm!UNC!UJCCPC From: UJCCPC@UNC Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Subject: Re: Alcohol and Marijuana - KEG Message-ID: Date: 26 Feb 90 14:21:00 GMT Sender: Practical Christian Life Reply-To: Practical Christian Life Lines: 24 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM.BITNET Gateway > True, some people do drink merely to savor the effect of the alcohol, > however, others have a glass of wine with dinner for the same reason I happen > to like Tang with breakfast...because they like the taste. > keg You might be right about a few people drinking just for the taste, but they still get high. Nobody drinks a glass of wine without partaking of the pleasure of the drug. I have to raise a voice against any attempt to make alcohol appear as anything than what it is--a very pleasurable but quite dangerous drug. There are many ways to define addiction. One useful criterion is death: physiologically speaking, there are only two drugs which can be fatal when withdrawn--alcohol and barbituates. NOTE: this does not include heroin--withdrawal is pretty nasty but not fatal. My point is that the way to fight drugs is to start being honest with ourselves. We live in a drug culture. It's absurd to try and teach our kids to stay away from something as harmless as marijuana when 400,000 of us die every year from tobacco and 50,000 of us are killed in alcohol-related accidents. Coffee, aspirin, cold medicines, sleeping pills--let's face it: the cure to life's problems is a pill! Quit trying to erect false divisions between legal and illegal drugs--our kids see right through it and laugh at us. We adults either have to quit our own drugs or legalize all of them. John Cromartie