An interesting report is being leaked to the news, to be released this Friday.
Feds: Teen use of alcohol can lead to dependency, mental illness
By JENNIFER C. KERR – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON (AP)
—
Depression, teens and alcohol are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report being released Friday.
A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used alcohol as teens who have not reported being depressed— 25 percent compared with 12 percent, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"Alcohol is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years," said John Walters, director of the office. "This is not just youthful experimentation that they'll get over as we used to think in the past."
Drinking alcohol can lead to more serious problems, Walters said in an interview.
For example, using alcohol increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent, the report said. And teens who drink alcohol at least once a month over a yearlong period are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than nonusers, it said.
The report also cited research that showed that teens who drink alcohol when feeling depressed were more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become addicted to alcohol — 8 percent compared with 3 percent.
Experts who have worked with children say there's nothing harmless about alcohol.
[...]
This sounds like a pretty good argument that alcohol should not be legal. It is a dangerous drug!
You can read the original article here: ORIGINAL ARTICLE!
In reading it, you may notice that I actually took the liberty of changing a couple things in my above quote. It may have seemed perfectly believable to you, but I fibbed a little. You see, the original artical is about marijuana, not alcohol. I simply changed all instances of "marijuana" and "pot" to "alcohol" and all instances of "smoke" to "drink".
And yet it still reads as true, because there is nothing in this article about marijuana that is not also true of alcohol.
So, my fine unfeathered friends: Does this mean we should legalize marijuana, or that we should bring back the prohibition of alcohol?
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