My city’s former chief of police, Norm Stamper, (he resigned to take a position with the Obama administration) has a nifty article in Huffington Post comparing marijuana and alcohol from a health, cost, and most importantly a police-activity point of view. (Emphasis mine.)

Alcohol contributes to acts of violence; marijuana reduces aggression. In approximately three million cases of reported violent crimes last year, the offender had been drinking. This is particularly true in cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, and date rape. Marijuana use, in and of itself, is absent from both crime reports and the scientific literature. There is simply no link to be made.

Over the past four years I’ve asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When’s the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I’m talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When’s the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.

All of which begs the question. If one of these two drugs is implicated in dire health effects, high mortality rates, and physical violence—and the other is not—what are we to make of our nation’s marijuana laws? Or alcohol laws, for that matter.

He said it here.

By odd coincidence I quit smoking dope and drinking booze when I was 21. I had a good excuse: I was so stoned from a New Years from “how high is high” competition involving bong hits, whiskey shots, and tabs of LSD that when someone asked what my New Year’s resolution might be I smirked and slurred “I’m going to quit smoking dope, quit drinking, and hitch-hike to California.” Everyone, including me, had a good laugh. But maybe seven hours later, even though I had a job and a place to live a hundred miles to the east and didn’t know a soul in California, there I was, bleary eyed and poorly dressed for the weather, on a west-bound interstate exchange somewhere in rural Tennessee with my thumb out. I only stayed in California for a couple of months but I’ve scarcely drunk nor smoked since. (Be careful what you wish for!)

And so I ought to be able to say, using a rustic Tennessee aphorism, that I have no dog in the pot vs. potables fight. But I do. So do you. Domestic violence, date rape, stranger rape, unsafe or unprotected sex, misused or neglected contraception, uncalled for provocation, robberies, muggings, and murder tend to involve alcohol at an extraordinary rate…

Oh, and sometimes the victims have been drinking too. What, you didn’t think I was about to start blaming victims did you? Yeah, victims are often drunk, and sometimes helplessly or recklessly drunk, but… and correct me if I’m wrong… but I’m given to believe that the distinguishing characteristic of victims is the presence of a perpetrator. And perpetrators are overwhelmingly likely to be measurably drunk. (I’ll go one step further and say the likelihood of victims being drunk has waaaaayyyy more to do with their proximity to other drinkers than anything intrinsic to their own insobriety. Call me a rebel here.)

Meanwhile pot? I dunno. Pot makes you dumb and say “wow” a lot, but based on first, second, and third-hand experience people spend a heck of a lot more time regretting things they do but wanted to while high than actually regretting things they did. Whereas with alcohol? Um, not so much.

One thing that’s pretty interesting about pot, by the way. An amazing number of women have told me they first figured out how to have multiple orgasms… or sometimes to have orgasms at all… while high on pot. As for men? Well, speaking only for myself, despite smoking pot heavily during the most sexually active years of my life I honestly don’t believe I ever had sex while high. Not “I can’t remember.” Just that I tended to have other priorities. Like listening to music on headphones and talking with people about rolling another bone, bro. Alcohol? Yeah, I’m sure it boosts some people’s orgasmic potential but overall alcohol… especially frequent or heavy use… plays a very large role in “erectile dysfunction” in men, comparable dysfunction in women, and overall very high level of dissatisfaction among partners due to it’s clinical suppression of active (as opposed to “oh whatever”) libido.

Anyway, I’m not saying people shouldn’t drink, although I sincerely wish they wouldn’t. And I’m certainly not saying I wish people smoked pot instead.

I’m just saying that if everybody stopped smoking pot tomorrow society would barely register it. If everyone stopped drinking tomorrow society would noticeably lower need for police, medical, and social-services.

Hmm… I’m trying to find a non-curmudgeonly way to close this post. I guess I’ll just say that, at least for April 20th, if you’re going to drink at all drink bong water… um no, still curmudgeonly… happy April 20th.

(Via Jill at Feministe.)