Cigarettes score lower because it does take more time. But that said, smoking anything is carcinogenic to your lungs, be it crack, pot or tobacco. Although Simon would have us all believe his propanganda that smoking pot is an insta-cure for cancer. Although he has not much to say on the emphysema aspect...
And yes, years of drinking heavily can damage your liver. In fact, drinking heavily can kill you in 2 hours. But you really have you really have to work at it.
Drugs on the other hand, once you start, it becomes much harder sooner to get off the path. The drugs will lead you down a road that on average with in about 5 years will end your life as you know it with little to no chance of reversal. It is a progressive death spiral. Think of it like a tip stall in a P-51 fighter, once you push past your limit, you are in widow maker lane with little chance to get out of it.
Alcohol is not nearly as damaging as fast, nor does it as easily drive the deep judgemental ability reductions and addictiveness that drugs do.
Fundamentally, drugs make you high. Getting high makes your body and mind want it more. More means more often, and as your body desentitizes, the craving remains, but with a more potent source required for perceived effects. Thus begins the death spiral that is not nearly as drastic, fast or effective with alcohol.
Google the photos. Look at the time frames for them. Ask your self which is more dangerous.
Making them available at CVS or Walmart is not going to change anything about the mechanism. In fact, in my opinion, it will only serve as a market entry service for users that will then seek out unregulated means to get past the desensitation factor to get the high they seek. They will either cook up batches at home or seek extra-legal marketers who will continue to make the "good shit" to a probably wider market base. End result, more opportunity for folks to get on the train, and use drugs, and cost goes down. Meanwhile, more folks will now have "free" opportunity to risk the train ride to increasing addiction.
Sounds like the cigarette marketing plan to me. Look how well that turned out. They even went after children.
You think big potential producers are going to miss a chance to market a product that self guarantees future sales due to a physical addiction mechanism?
Your hypthesis about legalization and regulated sales is based in a fallacy that anyone can stop using once they start by free choice. It is also based on another fallacy that once a person starts using, they won't want to seek more potent product to match or better their high. It also does not recognize the fact that using creates addictive physical changes in the brain and body, as well as desensitizes effectiveness. Thus the key point, you need more and stronger doses and you lose the ability to choose not to.
Why do you think there has been steady pressure to increase potency and effectiveness of drugs? Why has it had a market demand?
As I said before, alcohol while having similarities in some respect to drugs, does not equate equally. It is much less damaging over time (you said so yourself), and is self limiting in that it can only get so powerful (100% is 100%) per unit volume.
If anything, make drugs "legal" will while controlling costs, and to some degree (that which is regulated and sold via authorized outlets) will controll content, it will certainly make drugs more available and permissable, and thus I would predict a great shift in the below chart where alcohol already less than half of recorded of 'drug' deaths becomes but a minor stripe, and the drug bands widen greatly.
Do not think or be mislead that this argument is about pot, that is what the propagandists want you to believe. It is a campaign and strategy for legalizing all drugs, and it is about a proven mechanism of addiction providing a means to make money.
