Actually, it's been proven to help with pain, nausea, stress, appetite, insomnia, and other negative symptoms. I'd link you some citations but you likely wouldn't read them.
I was going to go on about how the hypocrisy in TRich's post is so thick you could grind it and pack it (bad pot humor?) but seems a few people covered that already.
Marijuana and alcohol are pretty different. One is the REAL gateway drug, has negative short and long term effects, is addictive (so much to the point that being addicted to it is recognized as a medical condition and a disease), and is legal. None of this is true for the other one, and it is illegal. Go figure
It probably has nothing to do with the fact that the production and distribution of alcohol is much easier to control, tax, and profit from for the government.
If you don't like it, that's fine. You're also well within your rights to demand people do not use it in your presence. Completely understandable. But don't sit there and act like it is some life ending, immature practice when you actually drink alcohol.
First, alcohol is legal. That automatically makes it a much more "mature" thing. And you won't find me out there drinking to get any "feeling". I have yet to hear one, just one, pot smoking defender say they smoke pot for the taste, or just for the hell of it. Truth is, you smoke pot for the effect it has on you. Period.
I kow many people who enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. Not because they want to feel mellow, or better, but because the taste of a good red with a nice NY strip just are good tastes. I don't know too many people who get much if any effect from one glass of wine, especially with a meal.
I have a scotch, and suck on it for a long time. I really do appreciate the smoky, mossy taste of the single malts I have. A bottle of single malt lasts me often a year or more.
Like all things in moderation, alcohol has no side effects either. In moderation, as we have all read the studies, a glass of wine or its equivalent in a cocktail can actually be healthy for you. I don't spend my time reading all the studies, because, its legal and i don't have to try to justify my usage of it.
I personally have never met someone who can really play at their best after smoking a joint. They may play good, or acceptable, but not at their best. Its physically and mentally impossible. Once the pot has taken effect it does in fact, shown medically, impair your functioning. Maybe not to a stupor or spasm, but you are slower. Alcohol can do the same. I don't drink before gigs, and I'm not a beer guy, so you rarely find me slamming them back.
As for alcohol being the gateway drug, unless I missed it I don't think there are too many studies or reports, if any, on the frequency of people going from drinking beer regularly to putting a needle in their arm or smoking crack because of it. Just about every story I read or have seen reported always talks about the movement to pot then harder stuff.
I didn't mean Matty to take a personal shot, but I let the devil get the best of me.
Just so you all know, I, like many here, was alive and kickin' in the '70's and '80s. There were ample opportunities to sample many things. So, unlike that Clinton guy I did inhale. I did a lot of very stupid things, but fortunately always knew that putting a needle in your arm was just wrong, and that anytime someone told me how much better a high was or how much more potent a thing was I should walk away.
I don't care, like I said, who uses or doesn't. I don't allow it in my bands, and there are more then enough quality musicians out there to fill the slots.
I am sure, when pot is finally legalized, that there will be a huge docket of lawsuits about how no one put a warning label on the roach and because of that they went, crazy, blind, got cancer, whatever. Funny thing is, based on the decades of knowledgeable pot smokers, I would assume that there will never be any lawsuits because it seems to be harmless. However, I know different...
