[Stuart]

I get hangovers on certain Lagers (mainly Fosters and Stella). Other beers and other alchohol affects me differently. However, I digress.

Alcohol is undoubtedly dangerous. However, You can't say it's more or less dangerous than any drug based purely on the number of deaths. You need to know how many deaths and how many people take it. It's no good just stating that 500 people die from coke and 250,000 die from drink because those figures don't express how many people use those substances. If 10,000 people take coke, and 500 die, thats actually a lot worse than if 10,000,000 people drunk and 250,000 died. Not that I am defending either.

As for people saying it's stupid to take drugs. Yes, it is. However, it is also stupid to smoke, and stupid to drink to excess. All are dangerous, and all have heavily advertised danges, yet people still do them.

There are many reasons people do things like that (peer pressure, to forget about the pressures of their lives being two), but logic and common sense rarely come into it.

I think part of the problem is simple psychology. Telling us not to do something can make it more exciting to do it.

As for the medicinal benefits of cannabis. Well, I don't know if this is true, but I suspect that if such a benefit is proved, they will be working to ascertain what ingrediants of cannabis give the benefit, and will release a compound of those ingredients as a drug. I don't think they'll ever say that full blown cannabis is good. Simply because there are (as I understand it) a few varieties, and not all are good.