Drum wonders about what will happen with alcohol consumption if pot is legalized:

One of the interesting questions about marijuana legalization is the effect it might have on alcohol consumption. On one theory, pot and alcohol are substitutes. That is, there's a certain amount of total demand for psychoactive drugs, so if pot use goes up, alcohol use will go down. That would be a big win, since alcohol use is generally a lot more dangerous than marijuana use.

Pot and booze could be kindof sortof equal when it comes to simply wanting to get a buzz on - your Saturday night party scenario. But there are situations where pot could just never replace alcohol. For example: dining.

Beer and wine compliment most foods, extremely well, at times. We have regular meals at our house which require a specific bottle of wine; ex. penne with grilled chicken, pesto and asparagus absolutely requires an Ecco Domani Pinot Grigo (a perfectly average $10 white wine); we've even reached the point where we will refuse to drink that particular wine with any other food (because it tastes kinda funky with everything else). But pot just doesn't have anything to offer in that respect; it has no flavor to compliment foods, and the effect doesn't exactly enhance appreciation of flavors. Pot might make you want to eat a lot of Totino's pizza (lemma tell ya...), but it won't be an important component of a nice dinner. And that means that people who want to enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner are never going to replace their wine with pot.

Now I don't know how much of the overall nationwide alcohol market that kind of drinking represents, but it's the vast majority of the alcohol budget in my house. We might have a glass of wine, or a beer, or a G&T on a weekend afternoon, but most of our typical wine drinking revolves around dinners.