we don’t say “cocainism”

  • cosecantphi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      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