Alcohol and cannabis share some common histories and cultural relationships. Both have been around for thousands of years and have been met with societal acceptance and rejection, as well as government prohibitions. Both have also been used for celebration, recreation, and medication.
The growing acceptance and availability of legal cannabis raises a user’s potential to combine it with alcohol consumption, creating what Amanda Reiman, Ph.D., calls a “synergistic relationship.”
Dr. Reiman is the vice president of public policy research at New Frontier Data, a Washington, D.C.-based data, analytics and technology firm specializing in the global cannabis industry.
A “synergistic relation-ship,” Dr. Reiman explains, means that when alcohol and cannabis are added together, they “enhance the effects of each other.
Her best advice is to avoid using both at the same time, or even switching from one to the other with some downtime in between.
Given a choice between using alcohol or cannabis, Dr. Reiman goes all in on the latter, a conclusion based on research and her study of therapeutic plants. She points out that no one has fatally overdosed from cannabis use, while over-consuming alcohol can cause death.
“Cannabis is not a vice, and I think it’s important to say that because I do consider alcohol a vice,” she says. “I think alcohol pro-vides relaxation and it can help with sleep, which are definitely therapeutic uses, but I do not think alcohol is a medicine. I think cannabis is a medicine.
She strongly cautions young people against using recreational cannabis, saying “there’s the potential that it could impact the way that the brain is developing in the teenage years.”
As for adults over 21, Dr. Reiman says cannabis use can impair short-term memory, but “from a re-search perspective, we do not see any long-term cognitive impact.”
[NOTE: Recreational cannabis use is illegal in Florida.]
Visit https://bit.ly/AlcoholandCannabis to watch MMERI’s Conversations on Cannabis Virtual Forum on YouTube featuring Dr. Amanda Reiman discuss alcohol and cannabis use.
[Link:https://youtu.be/j8wAWRzEJuk ]
