The Surgeon General is urging a warning label be placed on alcohol...

[surfered]

…just as Trump is becoming President. Coincidence? Well, my State better legalize marijuana in one quick hurry or, at least, make Xanax available without a prescription. My survival depends on it.

[Mosby]

1. Pot's not exactly a safe drug.

Maybe it's better than alcohol, but that's not saying much.

And benzos?

Overdose
Benzodiazepines can cause extreme drowsiness, confusion, respiratory depression, coma, and death. Mixing benzodiazepines with alcohol or other depressants can increase the risk of overdose.

Withdrawal
Withdrawal from benzodiazepines can be severe, long-lasting, and debilitating. It's important to follow your doctor's instructions for stopping benzodiazepines.

Cognitive impairment
Benzodiazepines can impair thinking and memory, and contribute to motor vehicle collisions.

Physical dependence
Benzodiazepines can lead to physical dependence, which is a physiological effect that occurs in all people.
Increased mortality. Benzodiazepines are associated with increased mortality.

Falls and fractures
In older people, benzodiazepines can reduce mobility and increase the risk of falls and fractures.

Pregnancy
Benzodiazepines are not recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding, as they are associated with pre-term delivery, low birth weight, and potential birth defects.

Other conditions
Benzodiazepines may be dangerous for people with acute asthma, emphysema, sleep apnea, advanced liver or kidney disease, or a history of substance use disorders.

[Elessar Zappa]

14. Pot is safe enough.

[Meowmee]

2. That was just on our local news yesterday

Apparently drinking even one glass per day increases the risk of cancer... I wonder about this because there are so many different factors that are involved in cancer, and many are still not understood.

[3825-87867]

3. Forget the alcohol...

we need a warning label glued to the front of RFK jr's head!
Alcohol may cause lots of things but at least for a 'brief shining moment" it can make you forget about RFK jr, Trump, Musk, et al.

Question! How much do we need to stay blissfullly incoherent til 2029?
I may take the chance.

[surfered]

4. 🤣

[Meowmee]

24. 😹

[Vinca]

5. The problem with scientific scholars is they must "publish or perish." One day booze is bad,

the next day red wine is good. One day aspirin is bad, the next day it prevents strokes. Coffee good, then coffee bad. I'm nearly 76 and my husband is about to turn 78 and we've always ignored these reports and been mostly healthy along the way. We plan to continue to ignore them. Stressing about it all might kill us.

[Loryn]

17. Tell me who funded the study,

And I'll tell you the outcome.

[Quixote1818]

25. I get your point and food studies are extremely difficult to flesh out because there are so many variables. However

this is exactly how science works. It changes over time as they get more data but most importantly you have to look at the totality of evidence and not just individual studies which the media tends to pick up and run with confusing everyone. For example, what they determined with alcohol is that it seemed like people who drank one drink a day were living longer UNTIL they took a closer look at the subjects. Turns out people were living longer because they were mostly wealthy people who would drink one glass of wine each night and they have the best healthcare but as the scientific community started looking at all the evidence they came to a very clear understanding that no amount of alcohol is good for you.

I still drink once or twice a month but no way in hell will I drink even one drink a day. The science is more and more clear that no amount of alcohol is good for you.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2441154-why-many-studies-wrongly-claim-its-healthy-to-drink-a-little-alcohol/#:~:text=Drinking%20even%20small%20amounts%20of,cause%20at%20a%20particular%20age.

This fellow explains how best to look at the contradictory data coming in. Some has a lot more weight than others and blame the media most of all for running with findings in small studies rather than looking at the entire picture.

[callous taoboy]

6. I just can't process alcohol or cannabis well anymore.

In a very uncharacteristic turn, I quit alcohol last August and some of my health issues have subsided. I still do the occasional gummy, but that is hit or miss whether I end up enjoying it or feeling anxious / depressed.

[Shambala]

7. Everything gives you cancer

?si=BJaQI70vV9gXNZtm

[stopdiggin]

8. finally - somebody got around to saying it

The only way to eliminate any 'risk' of cancer ...
Is to stop breathing. (literally)

Does that mean that I am totally discounting that alcohol has some factor of risk? No. It does not. But so does soda pop, lemonade, hair product, and back yard bar-b-que.

[Shambala]

9. Yep, everything in moderation.

Even moderation. I think Oscar Wilde said that.

[JoseBalow]

12. 'Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.'

- Ambrose Bierce

[spanone]

13. George Carlin...

Saliva causes cancer, but only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time

[ProfessorGAC]

20. What A Song!

A rare instance where Joe shows how great he is on piano.
He's in my Top 5 piano players of the rock era, and most people would say "Joe Who?
That Night & Day album was terrific.

[John1956PA]

10. There is already a mandated warning which is placed on liquor bottles. It relates to pregnant women imbibing.

The proposal is to broaden the warning to include all drinkers.

[stopdiggin]

11. two different risk factors (rather self-evidently)

[berniesandersmittens]

15. Ingredient and nutrition lable needs to be on booze too nt

[Mosby]

16. People have no idea about the number of additives in liquor

Tequila has 4 CATEGORIES of additives, salts, sugars, vanilla, colorings etc.

[ProfessorGAC]

22. Has To Be Under 1% Total

Additives have to combine to under 1%, otherwise the law requires them to be listed on the label.
Because of the spread of the analytical tests on the finished product, nobody would put in even 0.9%.
For tequila, the predominant additive is oak or mesquite extract to accentuate the flavors from the aging barrels. There's some in there anyway (ethanol is a pretty good extraction solvent), but to get the desired flavor profile, it would have to age more than what Mexican law requires. Extracting those flavors with steam from the same wood as the casks is quite fast & simple.
So yes, there are additives but typically they're alternate sourced natural products. (Sugar syrup is another example.)
Other rules limit ut in other liquors based on what's allowed, for instance, to call scotch, scotch. Or bourbon, bourbon. But, those rules shift pretty dramatically from one spirit type to another. (Scotch can't be called scotch unless the only thing added is caramel coloring.)
We learned a lot of GC/MS technique by running liquor samples. To train new people, we actually had Erlenmeyer flasks of various liquors in the lab. Looked better than liquor bottles at work!

[JanMichael]

18. Pretty lame. Not exactly heroic or earth shattering.

[Blue Full Moon]

19. Cancer sets in usually after a major medical condition

The body is programmed to die. Doesn't matter if you eat and drink healthy still going to die. I will say the marijuana is awesome. Relax and no hurting bones. Couldn't try it before I retired. Works so much better than the CBD.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Ambivalent

I'm seeing the value, somewhat, but I have concerns over government belaboring the obvious.
Also, I'd like to see how they isolated confounding factors, or st least interactive inputs.
There are so many genetic & environmental factors involved in cancer that I'm not envisioning how they isolated the outcomes to a single effect, especially when the population of "drinkers" is so large & diverse.

[Crunchy Frog]

23. I wish alcohol did more for me.

If it did I would probably be an alcoholic by now, but would probably feel better overall.

[chowmama]

26. Talk about kicking us when we're down

We're back to Hoover's tariffs, unemployment, no social safety net and a probable actual depression (not a wimpy recession) from all of the above, unless a small percentage of Repub legislators reach down into their pants, feel around, and come up with some testicles. Since they've shown no inclination towards this so far, I figure we're going back almost a century, if not more.

Now we're heading towards Prohibition, too??? Forget it - I'll figure out how to make bathtub gin.