as DuPont acknowledges.
At the moment it's just not taxed and regulated.
That's the difference.
At first I wondered if your post was ironic, with the whole history of the DuPont family opposing mj for their own purposes. I'll just assume this isn't a joke, tho, and respond with some other information.
The "gateway" claim is bullshit and this has been known for a while now. Anyone who employs it, to me, is a vile propagandist with nothing valid to add to the national conversation. The neuroscience journalist at Time magazine calls it : the myth that will not die. Why? Because propagandists use it over and over again... like they're, I dunno, addicted to lying. It's another one of those correlation/causation lies we get from govt. approved studies - that we've seen at least two of recently.
http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/29/marijuna-as-a-gateway-drug-the-myth-that-will-not-die/
Rates of cigarette smoking are declining overall in the U.S. To try to use marijuana as a scare tactic that it leads to cigarettes is just simply a joke. Rates of marijuana use, fwiw, have remained relatively stable since the 1980s.
Among teens - California, with the most liberal laws for the longest time, reports that:
Marijuana use been declining to stable ever since passage of California's medical marijuana law in 1996. According to the latest report, "Since 2003, use in the past six months has remained stable at 7% in 7th grade, 20% in 9th and 31% in 11th grade."
http://www.safestate.org/documents/css03mainfindings.pdfMarijuana use is associated with better blood glucose and cholesterol levels and lower weight (obesity is one of the major killers of Americans and accounts for nearly one of every 10 American deaths, and drain our society of $223 billion a year.)
http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00200-3/abstract
Alcohol consumption, but not marijuana, is linked to domestic violence.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140127112733.htm
anyway, that's all for now. Once I read that bullshit about marijuana as a gateway, it was obvious the person interviewed was either a liar or too stupid to discuss the topic.
eta: also anyone who doesn't understand the idea of harm reduction approaches (which is one reason why mj is compared to alcohol) doesn't seem to understand much about this issue either, from a medical/health stand point.
The other reason people compare, of course, is that mj is far less addictive than alcohol, yet receives far more scrutiny and societal disapproval from those in power. Maybe they should put down their shot glasses and deal with the reality that the majority of alcohol users are not alcohol abusers, either - even tho alcohol is a more addictive substance.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/156770/majority-drink-alcohol-averaging-four-drinks-week.aspx
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