we don't say "cocainism"
The normalization of casual alcoholism and stigmatization of even occasional cannabis use is truly one of society's greatest mysteries.
People are out here worried about their red 40 intake and then they down a bottle of wine or a six pack every evening like it's not literal poison that's completely obliterating their insides.
Get totally bombed at a family function and everyone has a good laugh, but if someone finds out you're a little loopy because you took an edible and it's time for an intervention.
Alcohol production was one of the building blocks of human civilization. Some of the first cities built by humans were built around farms used to produce alcohol. And our knowledge of how it harms us goes back millennia. The ancient Romans knew about alcoholism and would even slander politicians in debates as being alcoholics addicted to wine.
Marijuana, on the other hand, was demonized by cotton companies as they didn't want to compete with hemp. That hemp production also created a drug was icing on the cake they could further exploit. By the 1960s, marijuana had become associated with the antiwar movement and as a drug consumed by black Americans. Reactionaries used this as a pretense for cracking down on civil rights and Vietnam protestors, without violating the First Ammendment. White Americans quickly associated marijuana with liberalism and criminals and the stigma exists to this day.
Remember, Reefer Madness was taken seriously at the time of the film's release. For decades, Reefer Madness and other anti-drug propaganda was the only nonsense people were exposed to about marijuana.
I think the biggest difference is that alcohol is insanely easy to make in comparison to essentially all other drugs. You can literally make the stuff in US prisons with the very selective food items prisoners are allowed to have.
Cannabis for most of history required available fertile land and a specific climate to grow, so it was much easier to stigmatize the substance by stigmatizing the people connected to that land.
Speaking of climate, can you imagine the wonder of being the first Silk Road trader to get to the Himalayas and discover a second kind of weed plant?
Cannabis has also been selectively bred relatively recently to be much more potent. Before the 19th century, ditch weed basically had next to no THC and the quantity one would need to get high was quite a bit.
Basically, it wasn’t really worth it to use it as a drug unless you processed it into oils or resin and concentrated it. This made it much more difficult to manufacture and distribute.
Once the breakthrough was made to make it potent enough to smoke straight bud, it exploded in popularity
Sounds like canadian slang for "a heart to heart conversation"
That could definitely be part of it. Hell, you can make booze by accident if you hang onto a container of juice for too long.
Alcohol companies want to sell alcohol.
Tobacco companies don’t want to compete with cannabis.
Tobacco just makes you want more tobacco. Cannabis actually makes you feel something.
tobacco definitely makes you feel something. its just that that feeling goes away pretty quick and not long after never shows up again
Sure does. Unfortunately for a good amount of people that thing they feel is pure panic.
It's just straight panic attacks lol. Not even paranoia, though that does happen. Paranoia x10 turned inwards maybe
I've seen both cocainism and morphinism in older texts. About a 100 years ago, these were absolutely things, at least in German-speaking countries, and opiate addicts were consistently referred to as morphinists.
We need a Matrix remake where Morphinist tries to guide Neo out of the office but nods off.
reminds me of Matt Christman on this podcast episode about Pulp Fiction referring to Vincent Vega as a "heroin enthusiast"
Matt Christman Reviews Pulp Fiction on the Soundtracker Podcast
Vincent Vega as a "heroin enthusiast"
He just like me for real tho.
He had mid taste with all that China White though. Golden brown for the real pro-sumer hobbyist.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
It's more like an archaic suffix for diseases. Like "saturnism" (lead poisoning), "priapism" (pathological erection) or "cretinism" (congenital hypothyroidism). In some languages, the same suffix is used for tobacco addiction.
Calling somebody "a senescent saturnist" has a different ring to it than calling them a lead-poisoned boomer.
The anti-lead people had an incredibly marketing department. Saturnism sounds mysterious and galactic. Lead poisoning sounds gross and yucky.
I was thinking big lead wanted you to feel bad so they called it saturnism. Then big anti-lead said nononono, it's LEAD POISONING! Open your eyes, sheeple
yeah I think it's mainly just that it entered the language earlier than other addictions
That's right I'm an alcoholist
I don't think beer should be allowed to vote and I say "lagers" with a vicious sneer and a harsh edge in my voice
I cracked open that 12 year old scotch without asking anyone but myself, because I'm also alcoholist.
It's probably the oldest and most ubiquitous substance addiction in the history of human kind, so a lot of cultures have tons of ideology around it baked in.
in addition to the very good answers itt, a lot of alcoholics have a real hangup about being called or associating with addicts which is actually part of the back story of Narcotics Anonymous as a separate fellowship
you can hit :measurehead: pretty hard by the powers of marximism-lenisim-al-ghulism
Mazovist-Alcoholist thought
