Cannabis emergency, but alcohol is the real issue!
The “cannabis emergency” strand is still going. If only there was someone tackling alcohol abuse as the real major problem among youngsters, instead. This is not happening maybe because beer, wine and liquors are sold like water in the supermarkets and the State applies a tax on them therefore their consumption is good for the economy.
Indeed alcohol is a major issue and according to the data of the National Observatory the National Institute of Health (Osservatorio Nazionale Alcol-Cneps) this is a real emergency that kills thousands of people every year. Instead, no deaths can lead back to cannabis, yet according to the Minister Salvini the problem is still the cannabis shops in Italy, not the alcohol vendors.
The Minister’s statements were quickly backed up by concrete actions, with many legal cannabis shops closing down thanks to the “zealous” action taken by the Quaestors who are “obsequiously” following the Minister’s words. Needless to say that there is no such thing as a cannabis emergency because no one has ever got sick because of a joint, while alcohol quietly ends thousands of lives.
We live in an upside down world where the causes of real physical damage to the people and the society are systematically kept silent. This problem is a hundred times bigger than the cannabis emergency and it involves teenagers, adults and elderly people. However, the issue for the Minister still remains the joint, weakened and with an extremely low percentage of THC.
Some data on alcohol and its effects!
Italy is the most “alcoholic” country in the world but apparently this is not a problem according to the anti-cannabis movement leaders. Alcohol is consumed among the most vulnerable age groups: three out of ten 11 to 14 years old youngsters admitted that they drink sometimes. This is only the launching pad to adulthood, in fact between the age of 15 to 18 the percentage of drinking people increases.
The most worrying data is that it is becoming more common nowadays for people to start drinking at an early age, with dangerous repercussions in the future. Male teenagers aged 11 to 14 are more seduced by alcohol than female ones and more often than not they are “initiated” at home, a not so reassuring finding.
The point is that, opposite to cannabis, a bottle of wine, beer or hard liquor can always be found at home but no one ever questions the problem. Cannabis instead cannot really be found in cupboards like cigarettes, that are easily accessible to youngsters at home and that represent an additional issue.
Alcohol addiction is very similar to the one of heavy drugs, with devastating effects for the mind and the body. For young people going through body development in particular this means undermining their health and threatening their immune system. This translates in signing for a future as chronically sick individuals and often for early death due to the consequences of their actions. This being said we can conclude that there is no cannabis emergency but rather a social emergency related to the mild customs of the country.
Shall we talk about healthcare costs?
Have you ever heard of someone being hospitalized for a cannabis-related illness? Of course not. How many are the people who have been hospitalised because of alcohol instead? They are tens or hundreds of thousands of patients every year that the National healthcare system needs take care of at the expense of everyone. If we were to quantify the cost of alcohol consumption in Italy and in the world we would need too many zeros, enough to give us headache.
Don’t you think that alcohol producers should be directly responsible? Declaring an elusive cannabis emergency without taking into account alcohol-related deaths sounds quite hypocrite and it offends the intelligence of any mentally sane person because opposite to alcohol, cannabis does not burn your brain!
Shall someone let the Minister Salvini know? Shall we also tell the M5S (Movimento 5 Stelle party) paladins who are more worried about the environment and legislating on washable sanitary pads? They are the ones who talk about cuts and waste but cannot see the black hole of public healthcare and how much an alcoholic and sick society is costing.
The conclusion is that the problem does not exist for these people who on paper should take care of the public wellness and people’s health. You know how it is, alcohol is a taboo: even if everyone knows that it harms like uranium no one gives a damn as they already have a constituency. Therefore, even if it’s not healthy just drink on it, drink and forget about it and forget that drinking is not good.
It’s easy to declare a cannabis emergency
Smokers are only a minority therefore they represent an unnecessary popular support. Can you imagine different political parties saying that alcohol is illegal because it kills the people? Obviously not: as we have already mentioned, drinkers vote and in Italy the 60% of the population drinks, so draw your own conclusions.
Saying that cannabis is dangerous and that it kills people is bullshit, and if people say so they are knowingly lying. You will never find a politician going against voters while shaking a bottle of rhum saying “enough, this is dangerous!”. Here every disquisition can be taken as “beneficial side effect”: the drinker votes and it’s good, it gets sick and it’s good otherwise what the hell are the doctors for?
People have no value, if they did and the State really cared about the health of the citizens who maintain it financially, there wouldn’t be any more medicines to be sold. Apparently the cannabis emergency is so lethal that thanks to its natural properties it cures many people, not like alcohol. According to Minister Salvini the issue is the cannabis smokers, not the multinational companies who sell alcohol out in the open and everywhere. So take note: joints are harmful while alcohol is good, especially for the interests of the few. Cheers… so to speak!