Many college students prefer alcohol over marijuana as soon as they reached legal age for drinking, a study in the Journal of Health Economics established.
According to the study, apart from a considerable increase in alcohol consumption at the age of 21, there is a decrease in marijuana use at the same age. Conservative people believe that marijuana is a channel for the introduction of hard drugs: a rationale behind the widely use among teenagers.
"Alcohol seems to substitute marijuana. The decline in the use of marijuana results from a sudden easy access to alcohol by college students," Ben Crost, an economist at the University of Illinois, says.
Researchers establish that whenever there is an intermittent level that reveals clear changes, there is a need to establish a casual effect. All costs and benefits such as designed policies to reduce alcohol use and the minimum legal age for drinking or taxation of liquor require re-assessment, The Washington Post reports.
Public opinion Statistics indicates that Americans consider alcohol more lethal than marijuana. Many studies support this point of view, arguing that alcohol poses increased danger not only to the users but also to the public.
In other news, the opinion lacks universal agreement. The U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch strongly disagrees. According to Lynch, marijuana poses a greater danger because people start using it at an early age.
Eventually, if an individual believes alcohol is more harmful to people's health, then it is likely that he or she will restrict alcohol use.
According to The Health Site, alcohol drinking has been a tradition for many years among college students. Immediately young adults move to college; they want to experiment drugs here-and-there.