I think an under-appreciated angle here is that alcohol, like most other addictions, has a major mental health component. How many alcoholics are self medicatin

I think an under-appreciated angle here is that alcohol, like most other addictions, has a major mental health component. How many alcoholics are self medicating with cheap and easily accessible palliatives, and how many are addicted because of social norms? I’m not sure how to measure that but from personal anecdotal experience I would expect the former to be an order of magnitude larger. I also think if we look at it from a human suffering perspective as humanists, the Christian moral angle is unneeded. We can offer alternatives to alcohol that are better for people by understanding why they drink. Mental health and general life satisfaction are certainly reasons we would need to tackle for the worst cases, in addition to the established rituals the article talks about. Making moral arguments primarily through Christian theories of sin is a major reason the last temperance movement (in the US) failed, because it did not understand the reasons people drank and offer any alternatives.