5 ms·
Prohibition is back on the menu! Any thoughts on how to avoid the folly of restriction on alcohol? There seems to be multi-pronged issues, one being that the c
by vmception 6y ago
Prohibition is back on the menu!
Any thoughts on how to avoid the folly of restriction on alcohol? There seems to be multi-pronged issues, one being that the chemical messes up our body and is largely incompatible, and even if we altered the chemical someway and left the fun effects, we still have the issue of people being taken advantage of while experiencing the effects. But the trade in alcohol is so great that any state sponsored curbs on consumption results in a worse illicit reality.
- zionic 6y agoWe need to invent a new version of alcohol that somehow doesn’t damage the liver, and is ideally calorie free.
- mszcz 6y agoI'd also throw in something about, you know, not damaging the brain in excess quantities ;)
- vmception 6y agowhich doesn't help the people being taken advantage of, but maybe ignore that because its not an alcohol specific issue as any influence can do that
- readme 6y agoit's called autoerotic asphyxiation i don't recommend trying it
- ruined 6y agothese exist. ghb, methqualone, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines all have a similar mechanism of action, cross-tolerance, and similar withdrawal syndromes, but fewer side-effects than alcohol. alcohol withdrawal is often treated with benzodiazepines. they are all heavily controlled, and benzodiazepines are considered some of the most damaging and addictive substances of abuse.
- thomasmiller_ 6y agoProbably an unpopular proposal, but higher taxes on alcohol?
- vmception 6y agowhich creates the illicit tier of untaxed alcohol trade. maybe this is tolerable because not everyone will do it and others will just buy less?
- thomasmiller_ 6y agoRight, it's less draconian than outright prohibition and while the illicit trade will surely exist, for most people the default bias will (probably) be there.
- readme 6y agonope it's bad, more people will get sick from drinking black market booze
- bootwoot 6y agoI don't think anyone is arguing for prohibition. We've seen that fail with every substance we've tried it with. Public health/education campaigns, however, can be wildly effective with enough funding. Smoking cessation in particular has been massively successful even with no change to legality and billions of dollars of tobacco industry money doing everything they can to reverse it. The public health campaign in the US managed to turn cigarettes from chic to trashy and have made prohibition unnecessary. I could imagine the same happening with alcohol (and other problematic substances) on a long enough timeline.
- conistonwater 6y agoI agree they aren't arguing for prohibition at all. I don't fully believe what you said about health campaigns because, for example, obesity is also really bad for people and none of the existing campaigns against it had much of an impact, as far as I know. Furthermore, if one of the key concepts was to turn cigarettes from chic to trashy, then that seems really unlikely to work with either alcohol or obesity. How do you even really know why that one particular massive campaign was successful?
- watwut 6y agoObesity is very bad example. You don't wake up in the morning and decide to be obese this day and you don't wake up next morning and voila you are thin. The campaigns against obesity don't make people thin, because half the time they don't even promote stuff that makes people thin. Half the time they promote diets that makes situation worse in the long term. Campaigns against smoking did worked in the past. Drug use is down. Teenage v pregnancies are down. All stuff that involved campaigns.
- kelnos 6y agoYeah. While I imagine quitting smoking isn't itself easy, the concept of "don't smoke anymore" is very different and easier to grasp than "be less fat". Not smoking is a direct action you can take; losing weight is a complex process that can involve many lifestyle and diet changes, and the exact route to losing weight can be very different for different people.
- nate_meurer 6y agoI think the greatest gift of American prohibition is that it removed prohibition from the menu completely for generations. I believe its legacy has also aided arguments against the broader War on Drugs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sgt101 6y agoHow about let people make their own choices and make it possible for them to do that by educating and informing them? We could just trust people?
- lanstin 6y agoThese campaigns are the way to inform and educate people. And making harmful things go from cool to trashy makes trust a more effective policy.