According to the statistics, alcohol and marijuana are two drugs generally used in the United States. There are a lot of arguments nowadays which one is less harmful. Alcoholics would rather say that marijuana is bad; however, on the other hand, those who are smoking weed are confident about health hazard that alcohol brings. Nevertheless it does not mean that people can have it regularly. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the harm caused by using both of these drugs: alcohol, which is on top list among addictive drugs and marijuana, the number one among illegal drugs.
Alcohol addiction influences various categories of people ranging from poor to wealthy people. It has started hundreds of years ago. From the very beginning they were treated by surrounding as feeble and amoral people and as a result of it they were punished. To the contrary, approximately 62 million of population today is suffering from alcoholism and nobody is actually paying attention to them. Alcoholism is the disease caused by the repeated misuse of alcohol. The outcomes of the addiction may be devastating (Iversen).
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The first outcome of alcoholism is related to physical world as a result of regular heavy drinking. It is on the first place since it may cause a death. For instance, alcoholism may lead to cancer in the liver, stomach and kidneys. People should keep in mind that alcoholism is a chronic disease and it is not giving up easily. The second outcome, but not less crucial, is alcohol psychological issues. Alcohol makes people more relaxed, in some cases when person excessively drink it, he or she might feel anxious and depressed. Alcohol is also a reason of problems in relationships, changes in behavior, serious illnesses and death. Alcoholics differ from the rest of society; they can be easily recognized because of loss of control, miserable look and inability to think clearly.
Once alcohol gets into the human’s body, it starts to have effect on human functioning, on almost every organ and cell. As a result of regularly alcohol taking, human’s level of intellect starts to go down. As soon as alcohol gets into an organism it moves to the brain. It might affect a lot of cells there and aggravate vision, hearing, speech and other senses (Iversen).
To the contrary, marijuana is less addictive and less harmful than alcohol. It has an effect for about 2-3 hours after smoking. These effects are inaudible speech, eminent inhibition, lack of coordination and retardation. Furthermore, marijuana entails rise of appetite, dry mouth, red eyes, decelerated motion, hallucinations, paranoia and memory loss. If person regularly drinks a big amount of alcohol leads to a coma or death. Comparing to that, a person needs to smoke 50000 times to overdose, which is practically impossible.
A great number of studies have shown that chronic marijuana use increases rates of anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia. Marijuana enhances the heart rate by 20 – 100 % shortly after smoking. This effect might endure more than three hours.Moreover, some scientists have proved that marijuana includes carcinogens, which can be very irritable to the lungs (Lehrer).
Frequenly used marijuana is less harmful than frequently used alcohol. The amount of alcohol victims is more than 100000 people each year. In contrast to alcohol marijuana kills less than 10000 people. A lot of studies claim that alcohol leads to assaultive behavior and violence, while marijuana diminished the possibility of violence. Comparing to other drugs, marijuana considers being the safest drug, however it does not mean that people should take it (Lehrer).
All in all, one can make a conclusion about both of these drugs. The thing is that alcohol is predictable and people are aware of what is the feeling going to be like. As for marijuana, people sometimes take it without knowing how their organism will react to it. Many claims that marijuana is safer than alcohol since the death rate is much lower. Yet, it is better not to use any of them, since one quote says: “Better safe than sorry”.