Listen to Anthro.mp3
Alcohol and Cannabis
How people are taught to perceive drugs, particularly alcohol and cannabis, vary greatly between cultures. Today, we explore why these differences in relationships exist, how they differ between cultures, and the implications of these differences in smaller-scale communities a bit closer to home.
Sources:
Alcohol Use in the United States: Age Groups and Demographic Characteristics | National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2024, from https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-use-united-states-age-groups-and-demographic-characteristics
Carrigan, M. A., Uryasev, O., Frye, C. B., Eckman, B. L., Myers, C. R., Hurley, T. D., & Benner, S. A. (2015). Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(2), 458–463. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404167111
Castro, F. G., Barrera, M., Mena, L. A., & Aguirre, K. M. (2014). Culture and Alcohol Use: Historical and Sociocultural Themes From 75 Years of Alcohol Research. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Supplement, 75(Suppl 17), 36–49. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsads.2014.s17.36
Crocq, M.-A. (2020). History of cannabis and the endocannabinoid system. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 22(3), 223–228. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.3/mcrocq
Martone, R. (n.d.). Our Taste for Alcohol Goes Back Millions of Years. Scientific American. Retrieved March 4, 2024, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-taste-for-alcohol-goes-back-millions-of-years/
MD, P. G. (2021, August 11). The endocannabinoid system: Essential and mysterious. Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-endocannabinoid-system-essential-and-mysterious-202108112569
Stephen E., N. (2020, October 16). An Archaeology of Marijuana. SAPIENS. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeology-marijuana/
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking—Introduction. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2024, from http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking3.html
Sudhinaraset, M., Wigglesworth, C., & Takeuchi, D. T. (2016). Social and Cultural Contexts of Alcohol Use: Influences in a Social–Ecological Framework. Alcohol Research : Current Reviews, 38(1), 35.
Thaller, V., Buljan, D., Breitenfeld, D., Marusić, S., Breitenfeld, T., De Syo, D., & Zoricić, Z. (1998). Anthropological aspects of alcohol consumption and alcohol related problems. Collegium Antropologicum, 22(2), 603–611.
“World’s oldest brewery” found in cave in Israel, say researchers. (2018, September 15). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45534133
Transcript:
Anna: Hello friends and welcome back to anthro.mp3! We’re students from UMass who love anthropology. Anthro Hub is a website we help run that’s full of all things anthro! Make sure to check it out to look at some incredible blog posts and creative works made by students from our school and others. My name is Anna and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s episode and I’m joined by Leeling.
Anna: Um, and today we’re going to dive into a topic that is slightly taboo, depending on your culture; Drugs and alcohol, specifically the evolutionary history of human’s relationship with alcohol and marijuana, as well as cultural ideas and traditions surrounding these sometimes illicit substances.
Leeling: Hi, so I’m Leeling, and the main question for today is, what is alcohol?
Leeling: Chemically, alcohol is an organic substance with at least one hydroxyl group attached to a carbon atom. Well, that doesn’t mean much to me with my 10th grade knowledge of chemistry, but for others, the alcohol that people most often consume is ethanol, which is made by fermenting fruit, sugar, and grains, which is categorized as a depressant.
Anna: And so, how long have humans been producing and drinking alcohol? Um, our taste for alcohol goes back to prehistory. The oldest recorded evidence of human-directed fermentation of alcohol dates back to 13, 000 years ago in a cave near Haifa. The archeologists stewarding this dig reported the discovery of chemical traces of wheat and barley based alcohol in stone mortars.
Anna: They theorized that the beer was brewed as part of the burial rituals of the semi nomadic Natufian people.
Leeling: The next question is, why can’t humans digest alcohol in small quantities if it’s deemed as toxic? Evolutionary hangover theory is the initial ancestral interest in alcohol stems from nearly 80 million years ago.
Leeling: When our fruit eating ancestors gained the ability to detect ethanol in ripe fruits or trees, present day attraction to alcohol is just a vestige of this.
Anna: The historical model for the addition of ethanol in high quantities to hominid diets only after the development of agriculture and food storage methods that harnessed the power of fermentation for preservation nearly 9, 000 years ago.
Anna: Last semester, I took nutritional anthropology with past guests and friend of the pod, Professor Dorsey. We had a really interesting reading and lecture focused on a long running debate regarding which wheat product came first in human history, bread or beer. Is there a definitive answer?
Leeling: to that question?
Anna: So, early beers were only mildly alcoholic and made by fermenting grains and sugar together, and they were thicker than our modern beer. But they were a good source of nutrition and easier to make than bread, as they didn’t require any cooking. And fermented grains offer significantly more nutrition than unprocessed grains.
Anna: So there is some evidence that beer predates bread in human history.
Leeling: Was mild intoxication an intended consequence of this fermented wheat, or was it an intentional practice that continued after bread came on the scene?
Anna: The fact is that intoxicants are present in every culture on earth, with alcohol being the most widespread.
Anna: And it became central in many social and religious ceremonies as a way for people to come together. In Haitian voodoo culture, alcohol is consumed in order for spirits to be able to penetrate the body and give people the power to overcome hardships. So most likely it was an intentional practice that continued after bread came onto the scene, but it also might’ve been an unintended consequence.
Anna: So.
Leeling: Very interesting. So, it probably seems like the focus of most research on alcohol in the West is on problem drinking, which is influenced by cultural views of alcohol and continues to shape them. It sometimes fails to acknowledge that most people who do drink alcohol do not do so in a dysfunctional way, when in fact the association of drinking alcohol with social, physical, economic, and psychological problems is a relatively new phenomenon and is not the case in every culture.
Anna: Yeah, there are societies where drinking is regarded as morally neutral. For example, France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, where alcohol is more or less a non issue and part of everyday life. And in these cultures, drinking places are more public and they favor outdoor environments, and these are known as integrated drinking cultures.
Leeling: In places where it is more of a moral issue, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, these are drinking places where it is enclosed, it’s darker, no windows, low lights, insular, ambivalent drinking culture. Think of, like, pubs in the UK and speakeasies in the US.
Anna: Yeah, and something that I found really interesting in this research is that drinking actually produces different behaviors in different cultures, and this is well documented, but there continues to be studies that insist that intoxicated behavior is flatly the result of ethanol’s effects on 5 hydroxytryptamine levels in the brain.
Anna: And so effects of alcohol vary from culture to culture and it makes sense as our sober behaviors are inextricable from our cultural upbringing and environment, but I’d never thought about it in this context and it’s the same kind of feeling that you get when you learn that animals make different sounds depending on culture and geography.
Leeling: So what you’re telling me is our cultural beliefs about alcohol determine the behavior that intoxication produces, which is very interesting.
Anna: Yeah.
Leeling: In Britain and the U.S., alcohol is associated with aggression and so it is expected to produce antisocial or violent behaviors. For example, drunkenness is used as a defense in court. In cultures where drinking is less restricted and taboo, like Italy, for example, drunkenness would not be an acceptable excuse for bad behavior because they hold fundamentally different beliefs about the effects of alcohol.
Anna: Yeah, and so to flip back to the biology for a minute, let’s discuss a little bit about alcoholism and hangovers. In keeping with this historical model, alcoholism can be viewed as a disease resulting from our incomplete adaptation to the introduction of ethanol in our diets. ADH4 is the gut enzyme that plays a major role in breaking down alcohol and preventing it from going back into the bloodstream.
Anna: This enzyme also causes hangovers because the alcohol is converted into acetaldehyde, which causes symptoms like nausea, headache, and fatigue. ADH4 genetic variants might be associated with dependence on drugs and alcohol, which has the potential to support the idea that some people are actually genetically predisposed to addiction.
Leeling: In fact, cultures where alcohol is less villainized and more associated with peace and harmony tend to see less binge drinking and fewer social and health problems that result from it.
Anna: Yeah, and so to transition a little bit away from alcohol, I wanted to touch on another intoxicant, marijuana, as it’s being increasingly legalized in the U.S.. I think it’s a really interesting cultural phenomenon to be observing in real time.
Leeling: You know, there is archaeological evidence that humans have used cannabis for medicinal, spiritual, and maybe even recreational purposes for nearly 10, 000 years.
Anna: The oldest evidence of human smoking cannabis dates back to 2,500 years ago in the Zhezeng Call Cemetery in western China.
Anna: An archaeological dig found pipes containing residue of highly THC potent cannabis, and the cannabis plant is native to this area. Cannabis seeds have been found concurrent with paths of human migration across Asia and Europe for thousands of years. And along the way, we began selectively breeding the plant for its desirable properties.
Anna: As humans, we are also equipped with what is called the endocannabinoid system, which plays a huge role in our central nervous system. It synthesizes cannabinoids similar to those in the cannabis plant. The receptors in the endocannabinoid system regulate the activity of the brain’s other neurotransmitters, which is essential in our nervous system.
Anna: It also aids in regulating intestinal inflammation and plays a key part in how we learn and remember information. Because of this, Western medical research is just now starting to look into the therapeutic potentials of cannabis.
Leeling: In the U. S., cannabis was used in medicine for nearly 100 years before there was any significant opposition to the drug.
Leeling: Despite its long history of human use, marijuana is highly divisive in the U. S.. Reefer Madness was released in 1936, which sparked a moral panic about the effects of weed on young people. Alcohol had just been decriminalized after Prohibition, and the botanical impulse of some Americans shifted to marijuana.
Anna: Yeah, and at the time and still today, it was associated with Mexican Americans, African Americans and other immigrant groups which were discriminated against, fueling the war on weed. It was highly taxed and the parameters for its purchase and sale were severely restricted, resulting in heavy fines or jail time, if not adhered to.
Anna: It wasn’t fully criminalized until 1972, when the Nixon administration classified it as a schedule one drug, along with heroin, cocaine and LSD. In this description, it’s defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Leeling: As a part of the decade long war on drugs, these statutes have used – has been used to disproportionately target, surveil, and incarcerate people of color.
Leeling: Now as the moral tide is shifting and states have realized that there is big money to be made from heavily taxing the sale of legal marijuana, we are now confronting our assumptions about cannabis as a culture.
Anna: And there are a lot of generational differences in attitudes towards cannabis. For example, I was taught in health class that while alcohol is okay to consume responsibly every once in a while, marijuana is a gateway drug that should be avoided at all costs.
Anna: My parents grew up with the same mentality, which is partially fueled by the negative associations between weed and criminals, which is really just thinly veiled racism.
Leeling: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. And to kind of flip it, The cultural differences, many cultures outside of the U. S., cannabis is widely accepted and viewed as medicinal.
Leeling: I mean, even in traditional Chinese medicine, cannabis is one of the 50 fundamental herbs for treating lots of conditions, including menstrual cramps, hair loss, ulcers, constipation, and parasitic infections.
Anna: In 2023, a Gallup poll found that 70 percent of adult Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana, though that doesn’t mean that they necessarily condone its use for themselves or others.
Anna: So we are moving away from such dichotomous thinking about marijuana, but we still have a long way to go.
Leeling: And there is so much more research on this subject out there. So if any of you are interested, you can check out our sources if you’re interested in learning more.
Anna: Yeah. And so that was all of the sort of research, um, factual research, scholarly research that we did on this topic, but we also wanted to talk a little bit about our own experiences with alcohol, um, especially in the university setting in America at UMass, there’s such a huge drinking culture, um, and so – And there’s a lot to be said for why students drink, why they drink so often, um, and the social pressures that, uh, arise from that. Do you have any thoughts?
Leeling: Um, I feel like a really good segue we can go into is probably Blarney. And if any of you don’t know what that is, at UMass, every year, I believe it’s, um, I think it’s around St.Patrick’s Day weekend. Yeah, it’s usually the-
Anna: -week before Spring Break, like around St. Patrick’s Day.
Leeling: So, essentially, we all gather in large groups, usually around the townhouses or different areas as that. Um, and in the morning, we start drinking, probably around 8 in the morning. And I know that probably sounds crazy.
Leeling: And it is, but the history behind it was, I believe. So, um, back then a lot of the bars around UMass,like, started to understand that they were losing actually a lot of money around spring break because all the students were leaving around that time. So to make up for those costs, they pushed it back a week.
Leeling: And open the bars all day from morning to night to try and, you know, raise the money in the profit. But, um, at some point, I guess, a lot of destruction was coming out of this. So, um, Amherst as a town just decided to, you know, But as the tradition continued, the students just picked it up themselves and made, you know, the most out of it.
Leeling: But, you know, even this year, and I can tell you, there was a lot of pushback from this. We got a lot of police warnings, a lot of, like, even, even in my apartments. I lived in Puffton. Um, we got a lot of warnings about people parking. There was going to be police outside the entrances. It was a very high scale event.
Leeling: And I mean, I went, I don’t know if you did, but, um, you know, I can, I can touch more on that in a second. But yeah,
Anna: No, the in the university did put a lot of effort into trying to curb Blarney attendance. They had a lot of events on that weekend. They sponsored trips to New York. They were giving away tickets- Trips to, um, like spring break destinations. They held a comedy show that I think Tiffany Haddish headlined. Um, so they definitely are aware of the effects of it. And I think they’re also really aware of UMass’s reputation as like, quote unquote, zoom ass. Um, I think that that’s not necessarily the best image for them, especially like when people are thinking about sending their kids here.
Anna: Um, but I think learning in general, uh, kind of is symbolic of a lot of UMass drinking culture and a lot of college drinking culture in general, which is binge drinking, um, doing it just to do it. There’s like, you know, finding excuses for it, which I, I have my own theories about why that is in college students. Um, but if you, do you have any like, like ideas of like, why people tend to resort to that kind of behavior, not-not to like villainize it. Like I think a lot- of everybody-.
Leeling: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Um, I think my personal belief on it is growing up, kind of like what we already talked about in the U. S.,
Leeling: it’s pretty villainized to drink, right? I think growing up, people kind of want to stand out and be like that cool kid who are doing adult things. And I think in high school, you know, people drink earlier or start doing other recreational drugs or whatever that may be. In college, it’s kind of the first time you’re really on your own.
Leeling: You know, other people have different living situations, but it’s kind of that guaranteed place of, Hey, my parents aren’t around. Of course we have RAs and whatever else, if you’re on campus, but you know, for the most part, you’re on your own. And I think because of that, a lot of people go overboard. I think that taste of freedom is kind of liberating and, also, you want to fit in with other people. It’s, it’s a domino effect. If you have everyone doing the same thing and you feel like everyone else is cool doing it at some point, you’re going to join in whether or not you even enjoy this activity. So I think that’s why people don’t really drink a normal amount, if I’m being honest, because even the, the culture of pre-gaming right, like going out to a party, but before that, everyone joins together and you’re doing drinking games and you’re taking shots.
Leeling: It’s pretty normal to see at least a few people blacked out. I mean, very. I have a lot of people who come to visit me in Amherst who are from other colleges and whatnot, and a lot of them make comments about it, that our party scene is just insanely different than everywhere else. And a lot of those people, unfortunately, are the ones that, um, end up being blacked out when I go out with them, just because they’re not kind of used to keeping up.
Leeling: I mean, right now we’re seniors, so I think we kind of hopefully have a little bit more control of our, Um, limits. But I think especially freshman year, people did not know what they were doing.
Anna: Yeah, I definitely, I definitely agree. And I think it also goes back to what we were talking about with the difference in American attitudes towards alcohol versus in other places where it’s not viewed as such a taboo thing. People are introduced to drinking much more slowly by people that they trust, like their parents or other family members. And it’s just not as much of a big deal. And I think that’s a lot of the reason why kids start to binge drink right when they get to school is because it’s this thing that’s been kept away from them for so long and made out to be something so much bigger than it really is.
Anna: And so when they, like you said, like when they have the freedom to do so, they do it and they don’t have any limits because they have no idea what the effects are on their bodies. Um, I think that especially now, there’s also something to be said about sort of the like, increase in academic rigor and our increased isolation from each other due to online classes and COVID.
Anna: I think that a lot of kids are just burnt out and the only way,or the only like socially acceptable way and what is encouraged by the culture, um, is to binge drink, um, and to sort of like, that’s the way that you’re supposed to have fun with your friends is to go out. Um, and it’s also, like you said, with like, pre-gaming and going to the bars and going to a party, that’s like a lot of where people socialize.
Anna: And I think we’re all constantly looking for that sense of community, and when so much of our lives are, um, like, scheduled and you’re in class all day and you’re taking 16 credits and you’re doing all these extracurriculars, it’s like, that’s your one time to actually be able to socialize with people and try to find community outside of such regimented structures. Um, but we’re not really used to that and so I think a lot of people do rely on alcohol as a way to sort of Break down those barriers and be able to connect to other people
Leeling: You know, I, I completely agree and that kind of made me think of in a way, Blarney and the way that we’re kind of condoning that, but not the year long drinking.
Leeling: Yeah, I think UMass has to be aware to an extent that a big pull of people coming here is our party culture, right? And I think even, um, for the tailgates, for example, in the parking lots, people are drinking outside. And, I’ve never went to one, but from my friends who have gone to them, I don’t think they’re really doing much to curtail that and Blarney, I feel like they do curtail that because we’re getting like pressure from the town itself and the police.
Leeling: You can’t really escape that, but I think more should be done. Kind of what you were saying, like even with mental health. and alcohol treatment. And if we were kind of providing, I’m not saying UMass doesn’t provide resources, but throughout the year, I feel like maybe they could be doing a little bit more, um, at least connecting the two.
Leeling: Cause I don’t think a lot of people want to connect the two. It’s very hard to understand even maybe you have an addiction or you have an- a problem. Cause I think being, you know, right now, like we’re probably 21, 22, it’s current, it’s very, very hard to face that and accept that. You don’t really want to think like I’m 21 years old and I have a alcohol addiction or a problem.
Leeling: So yes, I think UMass does a really good job providing mental health resources and talking about binge drinking, but I don’t think they’re really connected to enough. And I think that’s why kind of like what you said with academic success and that pressure. You know, a lot of people turn to drinking and I’ve noticed kind of sometimes that a lot of my friends that are a bit more, like has a little more, like, academic pressure on them.
Leeling: They’re the ones that are out like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and it’s not in the way where it’s like they’re kind of drunk, they’re blacked out. So, I think there definitely are a lot more connections that people aren’t talking about. And I think there are more, there could be more being done to kind of figure out how to treat these illnesses and figure out how to de-stress healthily other than drinking.
Anna: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, and I think it’s really tough because the university does, yeah, like you said, the university kind of, they don’t like that image. But also it’s a, it’s a, it’s a draw for a lot of kids and so they kind of are having to play, um, both sides of that game where they don’t want that image to be associated with them, but they also know that they- that’s that’s part of why they’re a popular school for kids to come from especially from out of state. Um, so it is kind of uh, like a double edged sword for them and for the students, obviously um, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on student, um, cannabis use because, I know that, uh, marijuana is super popular in the pioneer valley.
Anna: Um the first legal, uh, non-medical dispensary in Massachusetts opened in Northampton and, now, Northampton has the most, uhh, dispensaries per capita in the U.S. I think. Um, and there’s a lot of, sort of like, there’s a growing I think similar to the drinking culture at UMass. There’s a growing, like, weed culture There’s a cannabis education coalition on campus that’s next weekend.
Anna: I think there’s a festival called Extravaganza, which is kind of like a music festival but meant to promote, like, recreational cannabis use. So do you have any like thoughts Liz? Do you think it’s like a similar, um, cause as the drinking or is it something like a little different?
Leeling: I think, um, at least for me personally, I think it’s a little different.
Leeling: I think when it comes to drinking, at least when I first came to UMass, I think drinking was the very like, “Oh, this, this is what we have to do to go out.” And of course I had some friends who smoked, but it wasn’t anything serious. Um, I think as time has gone on, um, for me personally, like, like in high school, I know a lot of people, that’s when they start or even younger than that.
Leeling: I mean, I didn’t, and that’s just, you know, I kind of like what you mentioned earlier, your parents, you know, growing up, we’re like, Oh, you can’t, you can’t smoke weed or marijuana is this or that. But alcohol, at least in my family, wasn’t as looked down upon if that makes sense. So it’s not that I was scared of it, but it’s like I had a lot more negative. So, you know, it wasn’t until, actually I’d say literally in this past semester I started, you know, getting more into smoking and it was through that I kind of realized, um, at least for me, I think it’s a lot easier to get addicted. I mean, it’s different. It’s different based on each person, right? But for me, like, drinking for me, like it’s associated with going out.
Leeling: Smoking is more so being inside with others. And I think a lot of it has to do with – It depends on who you’re around with, because I’m in an apartment and I live with other people who smoke. It was a lot easier to kind of like get sucked into that and I mean, I enjoy it, but there are a lot of negatives to it.I know other people may agree to that, but it’s a very escapism-type of drug. It’s, I mean, every, every drug is in itself, but for smoking, like it’s, it’s, it’s a relaxant, I believe, right?
Anna: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a depression. It depends kind of on the, on the, I don’t know, actually, no, there’s a, there’s, I had a professor a couple semesters ago who studied cannabinoids and I asked him if there was a difference, like, in strains of, like, how it affects you and he said that there’s no definitive research on that, um, but, in his view, the strain thing is kind of like a marketing thing. Um, the potency of the THC in the,like, actual flower does make a difference. But like, like, uh, what, like..what’s, what’s one, um, like orange Cush cake versus like, uh, seventh dimension is like Georgia peach.
Leeling: Yeah, no, I understand. It’s, it’s becoming, uh, commercialized in the same way that alcohol is. It’s interesting cause even talking about it right now in this podcast, like I didn’t really care about drinking. I didn’t really care about talking about it. But I mean, even earlier, if you were to go back, I hesitated saying I smoked. Yeah. There definitely is more of a stigma, and I think we’re definitely coming around to it more.
Leeling: But I kind of, to go back to what I was saying, at least for me, I found it more addictive. Just because, um, I think with how I get stressed out sometimes, you know, there was like a good, like during more turbulent times, I would be like, uh, to go asleep to like, I need to go to sleep. Like, let me, let me smoke.
Leeling: And it was getting kind of into a routine that I was like, I don’t want to be smoking every night to go to sleep because I’m so stressed out from other things. And you know, I have some friends that are high functioning pot users. I mean, I’m not, once I smoke, I’m kind of done or I’m very talkative, but I’m not going to go out and do things.
Leeling: I have some friends who like to go to class, they smoke, to do work, they smoke, to eat, they smoke. I mean, I even had a friend at some point, he had a very bad issue to the point that he could not eat any meals without smoking. And if he didn’t, he would throw up.
Anna: Yeah, and I don’t think that’s talked about enough in comparison to drinking.
Leeling: I think in UMass, yes, we talk about like the consequences of drinking, but I mean, with smoking, I think it’s looked down upon as a taboo, but not as much as like a health crisis.
Anna: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I’ve, I’ve had a similar experience where I, even with, like my parents, for example, like marijuana in, in Massachusetts, at least is legal to the same extent that alcohol is where if you’re 21. And you have an ID, and you can go into any dispensary and you can buy marijuana in the same way that you can go to a liquor store and buy alcohol. Um, but like, talking to my parents about it, I would not really like to talk to my parents about it. Like, I’ll go, I’ll, if I’m out to dinner with my parents. I’ll get a drink. I’ll get a glass of wine, whatever, but I’m not necessarily gonna be like, hey, mom, dad, you want to go like, smoke a bowl? That would be, that would be weird. Um, and that also goes back to like, they don’t use it. So it’s like, that’s why, um, but I’ve had a similar experience where I feel like the effects of like overuse are not talked about enough.
Anna: Um, and I think it is a little bit glorified. Um, I do think that I have had, I mean, there’s, you know, negatives and positives to the whole thing. I’ve definitely fallen into that same routine of like needing to smoke in order to eat dinner or to fall asleep or something like that. Um, and I think that’s, like you said, that’s not really talked about enough.
Anna: Um, And there should be more, I think because it still feels so taboo to talk about, nobody wants to talk about the negative effects of it. There’s so many I completely agree. There’s so much talk about the negative effects of alcohol, you know, there’s PSAs and all this kind of stuff about like, what to do if you drink, and we had to do that whole alcohol, um, education thing before you come to UMass, you have to do a full online course.
Anna: It takes like at least an hour, I think, to like click through all of the videos and like about the dangers of alcohol, but there’s nothing about the dangers of any other types of drugs. And that’s not, not even just marijuana, but like, I know that like cocaine use is semi prevalent at UMass. Like there’s other things that. And because people don’t, they’re so, um, uncomfortable to talk about and people, they’re so like pushed down below what is like normal that we won’t even talk about the risks of it. And it’s the same thing with like abstinence only education, where if you preach abstinence, more kids are going to get pregnant because they don’t know the consequences of unsafe and unprotected sex.
Anna: Whereas if you educate people about like, how’s, here’s how to, people are gonna do the bad, the quote unquote bad behavior, no matter what. And so if you educate them about the consequences of it and how to do things safely, they’re more likely to be responsible in their consumption. Whereas there’s no parameters for like, here’s how to use marijuana safely or like anything like that. Um, and so that’s why I think kids tend to fall into that, um, cycle. And there’s nothing, there’s not a lot of, at least university provided or like public education out there about how to, uh, deal with that.
Leeling: Um, so yeah, what I was saying was, you know, I’ve traveled a bit. I’ve been to the Netherlands, which is, you know, very open with weed. I’ve been to other places, such as like, um, Britain where, you know, drinking is very popular, and I’ve noticed in those places, at least in our younger demographics, I don’t see people getting as messed up as they do as, you know, for example, Amherst. And I think a lot of that has to do with open dialogue, and I think that’s why having conversations like this is so important, is because even the way that I hesitated to talk about this, it shows the social stigma of why people are uncomfortable talking about this and the less information you have, the less you know. Like you’re unaware of, um, the downfalls of it. And I think that’s why with drinking, I was a bit more educated on like, oh, you know, like I have to eat before I drink or I shouldn’t drink as much as other people or, you know, to kind of test your limits.
Leeling: And, you know, even with drinking, like you can somewhat measure. Yeah, you’re drinking. It’s a bit harder to do that with, with smoking. I mean, if you take an edible, of course, but it also, like, a day by day basis, your tolerance can kind of change a little bit, even especially if you don’t eat. I feel like the consequences are a lot, at least for me personally, a lot worse than drinking.
Leeling: So I feel like with open dialogue, especially around weed, I think the record, the recreational use of it in a healthy way could, you know, be promoted while also condoning, like, the addiction aspect of it and how it can be hard to get off of it. And what are the safe ways to consume or smoke it? So I think overall, like, drinking is more socially accepted, at least in the U. S. because it’s been legalized significantly longer. With weed, you know, we’re just kind of coming around. We’re just getting used to these things, but I think people are still really scared to talk about it. And I think that’s why, especially in UMass culture, like, like I said, like in, um, Freshman year, sophomore year. I feel like a lot of people, a lot more people were drinking rather than smoking. I’ve seen kind of a transition over time and I think that probably has a lot to do with stress and also not confining to what everyone else is doing, which is drinking and going out and whatever else.
Anna: Yeah, I totally agree. Um, I think that we’re in a really interesting cultural moment right now, especially like, I think, I can’t remember exactly. Is it 2018 that, um, marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts?
Leeling: I think so.
Anna: So we’re in a rea- and it’s every state I feel like these days is having some sort of referendum. Um, so we’re in a really interesting cultural moment where we as a culture have the, um, like the power kind of to flip the script a little bit and to say, we are going to implement some of these like safer practices, um, in order to curb the sort of negative effects of like binge drinking that we see, um, on campus. But, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, I guess. Um, so thank you all for tuning into our show today. Another thanks to our team members and our collaborators with Anthro Hub, especially our tech crew. To stay connected, you can find us on Instagram at anthro. mp3. You can also find our sources, transcripts of each episode and more on our Anthro Hub show notes.
Anna: I was one of your hosts today, Anna, joined by our other host,
Leeling: Leeling.
Anna: If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll love our next one. Keep an eye out on our Instagram for future updates on shows, specials and events. Catch us next time and have a great day.