my hero George Best,the best footballer ever to have played the game ,a man who was my idle,a man who i wanted to be every time i played football,be it for fun in the park,for my school or where ever i played and for who ever,gave up at the hight of his fame and career to become a drunk.he died in 2005 from a kidney infection , then kidney failure,and that was a transplanted kidney,but he still drank,he drank himself to death.the day he died i cried my eyes out..dont tell me what i do or do not know about drink.

1.) My ****'s father pickled his liver and died from scirosis.

2.) A friend from highschool did the same is died several years ago.

3.) A co corker was drunk when he robbed one liquor store (or a case of bud, a pint of Jack Daniels and all the money in the cas register) and was walking to the second when a local police officer pulled up. The police ordered him to hault, the coworker pulled out his gun and shot twice into the cruiser. The police officer was an escellent marxman and shot him dead on the spot. This story was on CNN.

4.) A neighbor committed suicide after years of over drinking.

5.) One of my friends lost one leg from a drunk driving accident. She was intoxicated but the other driver could not even walk.

6.) In highschool I was rearended at a stop light by a guy who could not even walk, he was traveling at about 45. If it were another car (not the 74 Buick Skylark) my girlfriend and I would have been seriously injured or dead.

7.) One night while traveling down Rte 32 in Willington CT my girlfriend and I came across a vehicle that was overturned on the other side of the road. I found out later that the deceased was 3 times over the limit.

8.) A mailman I knew in Miami also pickled his liver and died of Scirosis.

9.) I came across a two car collission in Miami where people in one vehicle were all dead. The driver from the other vehicle was not seriously injured though he was intoxicated and did total his vehicle.

10.) The mother of one of my best friends from college also died from alcoholism. He told me that when he went to he apartment in New Orleans in the last year of her life there was **** all over the walls from a disintegrated esophogus valve.

11.) Which brings to the most recent case of my friend Sean, and he was one of those amorous drunks who was never violent, had damaged his esophoguc valve so much that he was puking up and spitting up **** just before they did an emergency procedure last March to save his life. The Dr told him that he had a 50/50 chance of surviving the procedure. Fortunately he did and has been sober ever since.

And there are many many more that I personally know of.

Now how many of my heavy pot smoking acquaintances have even gotten near this type of damage and risk to their lives? I would say none. They may get lethargic, lay on the couch and eat too much, and often seem like they are taking stupid pills. But the damage is not nearly as extensive. Almost eveyone I talk to including people who would rather drink agree that alcohol has cost them much more than the pot smokers they know.

But just to make it clear I was not the one who brought up the anecdotal evidence as support for a claim that alcohol is less damaging in regard to life and finances as marijuana. So I am only following suit here in regard to this kind of evidence. I am completely willing to look at statistical evidence here.