For Robin Room, director of Australia's Center for Alcohol Policy Research, marijuana is less harmful than alcohol on both social and health-related levels.
Room spoke to Aussie paper the Herald Sun on Tuesday, saying that marijuana should be legalized while still heavily watched-over and controlled by the government because the societal detriment associated with it is not as harmful as that of drinking.
"It makes sense to legalize marijuana in a controlled market," he said. "We are in a situation where we need to look ahead. I think we need to have the discussion and it makes a lot of sense in terms of, among others, cutting down government costs to have a fairly highly controlled legal [cannabis] market and, while we are at it, tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco."
According to Professor Room, who is one of the premier academics at Melbourne University, teens are more likely to avoid violence and remain safer if they use cannabis rather than chugging from the neck of a bottle of Smirnoff.
Alcohol, he said, is more dangerous than marijuana because it often leads to aggression, physical harm, loss of emotional ability to deal with life issues, and a marked impact on family and work life.
Marijuana, on the other hand, has never been a drug associated with a single death or violent act, Room reported.
"Cannabis is not without harm, but it's substantially less than alcohol and tobacco in terms of social harm," he said. "If you are adding the cannabis to an equal amount of alcohol, then in some ways you'd be probably less likely to be aggressive."
Australia is a nation particularly plagued by violence fueled by an evening of too many shots. Booze-related hospital admissions steadily grow each day, the Herald Sun reported.
Professor Room stated that if marijuana was made legal, city-states could use public stores and employees to control sales-he claimed that marijuana should not be sold in large stores such as supermarkets, should stay off of advertisements, and not be available at large-scale events like sports games.
