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How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unfo
by umvi 7y ago
How about we start treating alcohol like smoking? For example ban alcohol advertising like we have with tobacco and I bet society would improve in a lot of unforeseen ways (besides the obvious reduction in alcohol related deaths and diseases and family issues).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- knolax 7y agoDidn't we try that with prohibition?
- jmondi 7y agoUm, prohibition is the complete ban of all alcohol. umvi is proposing the ban of alcohol related advertising. One is completely different than the other.
- mfatica 7y agoBanning advertising of something is a bit different than banning the thing itself
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jhrmnn 7y agoThe Scandinavian countries show that if you do not prohibit completely, but just make people jump through some hoops to get it and/or make it very expensive, it sort of works.
- retiredcoder 7y agoI find that there is much more smoking (including indoor) and drinking in Denmark than most of any other place I lived, or maybe I am just older now and can’t the hangovers are much longer??
- dmoy 7y agoMaybe they meant Sweden/Norway only? I'm not sure. I think the alcohol tax in Sweden is like a full 7x higher than Denmark. I could be wrong there. This is second hand from an old co worker, and years out of date.
- jhrmnn 7y agoYes, I had Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in mind. Iceland is very strict. Denmark is pretty continental in this regard.
- johnnyletrois 7y agoI think Swedes just end up buying more when visiting systembolaget. And students buy van loads on road trips to Germany.
- ex3ndr 7y agoIt is banned in Russia, zero effect.
- darkpuma 7y agoThat it doesn't work in Russia is far from proof that it couldn't work elsewhere. Edit: Prohibition on advertising is not prohibition on alcohol. I reject the relevance of this suggested equivalency. There is no risk of organized crime getting supercharged by a prohibition on alcohol advertisements.
- innot 7y agoAlcohol prohibition in the US that happened in the twenties doesn't seem to have helped as well?
- bunderbunder 7y agoI guess it depends on what you mean by "helped". I've seen a few figures, none of which indicated that it had no effect on alcohol consumption in the US, and none of which indicated that it came anywhere close to eradicating alcohol consumption, either. It's naturally hard to estimate, given that it was all done clandestinely so there aren't really any official figures to use, but I got the impression that you could say with some measure of confidence that it reduced consumption by somewhere between 30% and 70%.
- bunderbunder 7y ago{ "Advertising increases demand for a product.", "Banning advertising does not reduce demand for a product." } I think you really do gotta pick one there, because each implies the other's opposite. You don't really even need two different studies to demonstrate "demand is higher in the presence of advertising" and "demand is lower in the absence of advertising". It's mathematically impossible to experimentally demonstrate one without also demonstrating the other. Not entirely sure where I'm going with this. But I would say that failure to prove that a group of people responds to advertising is not the same thing as proving that a group of people does not respond to advertising. So, if we really have demonstrated that banning advertising didn't have an effect on demand for alcohol in Russia, we'd expect to also see that alcohol companies don't even want to advertise their products in Russia, because they know it would just be wasting money. Do we see that?
- dpq 7y agoI distinctly recall these (and much more restrictive) measures having been tried in the U.S. almost exactly 100 years ago, to a very modest success. Sugar seems to be an easier target, because there are sweeteners like aspartame. Alcohol almost by definition doesn't have a healthy replacement.
- maddyboo 7y agoCannabis.
- Tade0 7y agoCannabis is not healthy.
- OJFord 7y agoNor is it an 'alcohol replacement' :/
- edmundsauto 7y agoAFAICT, there's not much definitive research that shows the harms of cannabis consumption. I'm aware of the research that clearly counterindicates usage by teenagers and young adults due to continued brain development issues, but is there evidence that cannabis consumption is unhealthy otherwise? I think even the larger cohort studies failed to connect joint smoking with ear/nose/throat/lung cancer, much to the consternation of people who like to throw down the "combusting and inhaling anything has to be bad for you" statement.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rabbitonrails 7y agoYou must be fun at parties.
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments to Hacker News? We're hoping for better than internet default here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Alex3917 7y agoFor most people, alcohol isn’t addictive in the same way that smoking or sugar is. If you eat stuff with a lot of sugar it makes things without sugar actually taste worse. Whereas drinking alcohol doesn’t make water taste worse or whatever. Also alcohol only kills 80k or so Americans per year, way less than smoking or sugar.
- dyarosla 7y agoSource re:addictiveness?
- pmarreck 7y agoAlcohol: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... Sugar: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-sugar-addictive-drug https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/experts-is-...
- buboard 7y agothe second is not a good source. The title is misleading as the article itself says experts don't agree. I don't think it's clear what is an "addiction", as addiction is part of how humans (and all brains) work. reinforcement of reward is necessary for normal function. The most discrete sign of addiction would be the molecular switch DeltaFosB which is manifest in behavioral and drug addictions. However, for things like sugar things are more nuanced. The two are also hard to compare side-to-side because alcohol addiction is like 50-70% genetic, and the effects tend affect other people more severely while sugar basically harms the person who eats it.
- pmarreck 7y ago> the second is not a good source. That's the genetic fallacy. They link to a number of other sources from that article with supporting information such as a Connecticut College study and a Princeton University study. I would deem university sources "good" (although you're still subject to cherry-picking and the like)
- elorant 7y agoThanks but no thanks. I'm a moderate consumer of wine and I just love it. It's good for health, it supplements food in a great way, it rarely gets you drunk and it tastes great. Sure, if you can't hold your liquor eventually it will kill but so will do everything you eat or drink if you consume it in great quantities.
- jsty 7y agoWould limiting alcohol advertising really have that dramatic an effect on the 'good' wine market? I can't recall the last time I bought a decent bottle of wine because it was advertised.
- cataphract 7y agoDo wine tasting events count as advertisements? That's how I and many people try new wines.
- elorant 7y agoYes because I don't trust reviews. I do on the other hand trust specific brands that I've tried before. So if they have a new label I'd like to know it. And the best way to know that is from ads on printed magazines.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoA small amount of wine has been shown in small scale studies to have a moderate health benefit (though it's possible that's due to economic factors), most wine users consume far more wine than was studied. Enjoy your drugs, but don't kid yourself that you are consuming bacteria excrement for your health.
- moroleth 7y agoAlcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to. It's also far less harmful when consumed in moderation, no matter how many elusive studies want to push how "there is no safe alcohol dosage" because you might have 15% more risk of cancer in 30 years or something. I agree advertising is bad but you're going to have a hell of a hard time convincing billions of people that they should stop socializing the easy way.
- eternalny1 7y ago> significantly harder to get addicted to Are you sure about that? It has negatively affected millions of people in the US. "A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this month finds that the rate of alcohol use disorder, or what's colloquially known as “alcoholism,” rose by a shocking 49 percent in the first decade of the 2000s." One in eight American adults. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2647079 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
- moroleth 7y agoI'm talking about typical usage in a social setting. People may drink a few beers a couple days in a week for months, or even years, and quit without any issues. Hardly the same with an equivalent "social dose" in cigarettes.
- iliaznk 7y agoAlcohol helps people socialize and is significantly harder to get addicted to – the 1st part of your sentence seems to contradict the 2nd: nowadays people can't think of getting together and not drinking and that's to me exactly because they got addicted to socializing under alcohol so much they can't socialize normally without it.
- retiredcoder 7y agoAnd that’s reinforced by advertisement over and over again. While there are so many fun activities not involving alcohol. Seems like most of team building events nowadays boils down to pretentious dinner plus drinking to celebrate?
- runarberg 7y agoIt’s banned in Iceland. The big breweries simply offer a low alcohol with the same branding and advertise those. Poor tourists end up being the only ones buying them, not knowing they are low alcohol, as they are allowed to sell the low alcohol beers in the grocery stores while regular beer can only be sold at the state run liqueur stores.
- V-2 7y agoVodka companies in Poland were even more inventive. One of them started a yacht rental enterprise (or something along these lines), and proudly advertised "łódka Bols". "Łódka" meaning a boat, and coincidentally rhyming with "wódka" (or vodka). Another opened a horse holiday farm, whose abbreviation - "WTK", following the brand's well recognizable name - happens to sound pretty much like "wódka" :)
- jithesh 7y agoAlcohol consumption is by choice by adults, where as sugar consumption is not - children's food are mostly sugary items today in the market. They get addicted by the time they are teenagers, and for many of them (30% or above of all the kids), due to resulting obesity, rest of their lives are spent fixing/fighting it - depression and health issues.
- buboard 7y agoAlcoholism is like 50% genetic.
- Mizza 7y agoI like this idea. Another thing we can do is to demand an FDA-approval process for recreational drugs! Dr. David Nutt has been developing a safer alcohol alternative, Alcarelle [1], but is having trouble finding a foothold in the marketplace as we have no process for safe-substance certification! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alcohol-hangover-liver-damage-alcosynth-david-nutt-a8841141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/alco...
- Creationer 7y agoI've lived in countries with extremely liberal alcohol laws: low taxes, liberal advertising, 24/7 availability, drinking allowed on the street. I've lived in others where Alcohol advertising is banned, availability is limited to Government-run stores at certain times, and the taxes are very high. Binge drinking and general abuse seemed to be much higher in the latter. Particularly people seemed to get drunk before leaving the house, or used drugs, since both were cheaper than buying alcohol at a venue. If anything is going to be restricted in the form of tax or advertising, hard spirits should bear the brunt instead of beer and wine. It might also make sense to loosen up taxes at licensed venues, which are controlled environments with trained bartenders and security.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoI don't think you can draw a cause and effect relationship here. Just as important are social attitudes towards alcohol.