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I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do. Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoho
by mgce 9y ago
I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do.
Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoholism and having the will to treat it. There's an enormous amount of shame, stigma, and denial toward alcoholism, to the point that most who suffer from it still choose to hide that reality as much as they possibly can.
Even worse, the legality of it promotes a culture of celebration (advertising, fancy and elaborate liquor branding, snazzy bars, nightlife culture, bottle service, etc. etc) that is in so many ways uniquely destructive in its own right. Like everyone should be able to find joy in drinking, and those who struggle have something horribly wrong in them that carries the risk of denying them the good life, friends, social opportunities, cultural connection, and so on (suddenly mundane invitations to bars, cocktail parties, weddings, shows, dinner at a friend's home, drinks with co-workers, etc. become awkward and potentially dangerous).
There's a whole culture built around it: mainstream culture. And someone facing their problems with this particular drug face the prospect of losing access to the culture of their entire society. That's just daunting.
I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. But it's no walk in the park even legal. And poses some of its own unique challenges.
- kazagistar 9y agoWe've done work on tobacco. Sure there is still a culture around smoking and whatnot, but its generally accepted to be unhealthy and something that is a problem.
- pixl97 9y ago>I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. We already tried this experiment once. Making alcohol illegal did two things. It actually reduced consumption and alcoholism. It greatly increased the amount of black market crime, and it drastically changed how it was consumed. Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state violence.
- Zak 9y agoProhibition can also increase adverse events like overdose. Heroin addicts usually know how much of their usual dealer's heroin, cut to a particular purity to take to get high without dying. If they take the same dose of a more pure drug, they overdose. If they take what they think is heroin, but is actually fentanyl, they overdose. Likewise, during alcohol prohibition, liquor containing methanol was a common risk for poisoning when drinking black market alcohol. Even the cheapest grain alcohol at a college liquor store today will not contain a dangerous amount of methanol. Legal heroin would reduce this kind of risk in the same way; it would contain what it says it contains, in the concentration on the label and would not contain other harmful substances.
- mgce 9y ago> Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state violence. I think this is one of the key insights. Although, thankfully, I think it's more than a binary choice (either a) legal or b) illegal). Regulated legality combined with heavy restrictions on marketing and sustained support for rehab / support / education seems to me the best of all worlds. Still keep things accessible enough to cut out the motivation for the black market. But don't let the less scrupulous side of legal society run amok and actively exploit that.