Opinion essay - Simón Gasión

There are various hundreds, if not thousands, of drugs that the average citizen doesen't have access to because they are regulated or outright prohibited by the government and authorities. These drugs provide the consumer vivid hallucinations and other effects, and it's possible to develop a dependance on them if consumed regularly. However, there are other legal alternatives that pose as much of a threat as any other drug, such as tobacco, which has given a worryingly large amount of people including teens addiction to nicotine, or alcohol, that can blur the line between reality and hallucination as much as other banned drugs if taken in large quantities.

The government alredy intervenes in the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, you can see a warning that smoking will kill you on every pack of cigarettes, but people completly disregard it and because of that the percentage of people with lung cancer grows by the day, and alcohol is the cause of a vast majority of accidents on the road, so if you consume alcohol you are not only putting yourself but those around you in danger as well.

It is true, however, that alcohol helps people let loose in parties and other social gatherings, making it easier to socialize for introverts or meeting new people, and smoking a cigarette has been shown by numerous researchers to reduce anxiety, so they are not entirely bad, however the risks they produce far outweight the benefits, which at least in the case of tobacco can be obtained through other, far less harmful alternatives such as an electronic cigarette. In the case of alcohol, a bit more of government intervention would most ceirtainly save a lot of lives and prevent many alcohol induced comas in young or first-time drinkers.