mtnhack, I know lots of people have had their lives ruined by overuse of alcohol (or at least overused alcohol as they ruined their lives) but that's why I said it needs to be looked at in a per capita basis when you make a statement like the radio caller did. To claim alcohol is more dangerous implies it has a statistically higher probability of ruining the life of every person who uses it. When I look at my family, I'm seeing 1/2 or maybe 1/4 pot users who messed up their lives versus 2/19 alcohol consumers. That's a big difference in ratio. Note by the way that I never said use of pot caused their life screwups -- to this day I don't think we know for sure whether dependencies themselves ruin the lives or whether the people who are prone to ruining their lives are also prone to indulge in activities or substances that help them forget they're doing so. Correlation is not causation.
Now if you want to discuss third-party victims, I think the statistics flip -- in part because pot so frequently seems to take away the drive to do much of anything -- but claiming that alcohol is "more dangerous" is specious at best and that's readily apparent when you look at the much much larger set of consumers who do NOT have problems.
