News » Is it Ironic that POTophobia is the Fear of Drinking Alcohol?

Potophobia is defined as “a fear of drinking of drinking alcohol or of becoming an alcoholic.”

Its etymological roots are in the Latin word potorius, which means “drinking” in English – but maybe the Latins were also on to something else as well, considering that pot has been shown to be far less harmful than alcohol in study after study.

Perhaps they were trying to give us a little push towards the safer alternative?

DrugWarFacts.org has some nice charts and graphs depicting the 2007 findings of British medical journal The Lancet, in which experts ranked popular drugs, both legal and illegal, by three types of harm: physical, dependence, and social. We all know that anything can be abused when not used in moderation – even something as key to life as food – so how does pot fare?

As the chart to the left depicts, the only drug harm level that was considered “less harmful” than marijuana was that of caffeine, and even then only in certain categories. Marijuana was shown to have a higher intoxication level than caffeine – as one would expect from medical quality cannabis – and in reinforcement – a measure of the substance’s ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it repeatedly. In terms of dependence, withdrawal, and tolerance, THC is less harmful than even caffeine – alcohol does not even come close in any of these categories. In fact when choosing other drugs that match the same level of potential harm the two that come closest are heroin and cocaine, yet unlike those two or marijuana, it is available in stores and bars across the country.

It is clear where Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle and currently a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) stands on the issue of alcohol vs. marijuana. In an article for the Huffington Post titled 420: Thoughts on Pot vs. Alcohol from a Former Police Chief he pulls not just from his experience on the job, but also some hard facts.

Alcohol-related traffic accidents claim approximately 14,000 lives each year. It is harder to find statistics on THC only fatalities as alcohol is almost always present but stereotypes and studies alike have shown that marijuana users are both more aware of their physiological condition and tend to drive slower. As CannaCentral reported last August, studies have even shown that Driving High on Marijuana is not an Impairment.

In terms of overdoses of the drug itself it is easy to determine the winner. There has never been a fatal overdose of marijuana in recorded history, while alcohol poisoning claims hundreds of lives every year.

In fact, you would be more likely to kill yourself with an overdose of nutmeg than an overdose of marijuana. The ratio of the effective dose – defined as the amount of a drug a user would take to have a desired effect – and the lethal dose – an amount that can cause death – is skewed heavily in marijuana’s favor. Ten times the desired dose of alcohol can kill. While that sounds like a lot, binge drinking is a reality in many places including college campuses where social pressures and inexperience can lead to alcohol poisoning or worse.

How much pure ETOH was in that jello shot anyway?

Marijuana on the other hand is one of the safest drugs known. You would have to accidentally ingest over 1,000 times the effective does before it becomes lethal.

Stamper goes on to reflect about his conversations with other officers across the United States and Canada regarding the violence they have encountered from marijuana as opposed to alcohol. Most cannot recollect a single violent incident where marijuana was the only substance a person had used. On the other end of the spectrum, alcohol availability is know to be a contributing factor in violent crime. Studies have shown that 45% of domestic abuse cases involve drinking, and 40% of those convicted of rape or sexual assault said they were under the influence of alcohol at the time of their attack.

It seems like the Latins were trying to tell us something – pot is definitely the SAFER choice.

[source SAFER]

Tags: alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, driving, fatalities, heroin, latin, LEAP, marijuana, Norm Stamper, potophobia, SAFER