11 ms·

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everyth

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue.

matthewfcarlson 5y ago
I would much rather legalize pot over alcohol being illegal. If alcohol had the same usage as pot we would have far fewer deaths. My only complaint is that pot smells awful (though alcohol isn’t much better).
golemotron 5y ago
This comes from the point of view that harm is a scalar quantity. There are many different dimensions of harm and they vary wildly for each activity/drug. Reality is more nuanced than any single measure we select.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
> if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. Please do not decide policy using this kind of reasoning. Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. > A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Consistency in legal matters seems like a good and necessary thing for ensuring fairness. What is the basis for Emerson’s quote to apply here?
  - mlac 5y ago
    Statesmen saying “alcohol is legal, might as well legalize everything else that is less harmful on some dimension”. Where the alternative may be just leaving alcohol as an exception, or outlawing it (but yeah… don’t mess with Americans and their Alcohol - see prohibition and the whiskey rebellion).
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Suppose the law states that David Haroldson (or the Glorious Leader, or foreign diplomats) cannot be convicted of any crime. That's inconsistent, (perhaps) arbitrary, and unfair. Yet, it would be foolish to extend this conviction-immunity to everybody.
    - virgildotcodes 5y ago
      For the sake of consistency, wouldn’t it be desirable for the glorious leader to be subject to the same legal punishments as the masses?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        That's his point.
        kergonath 5y ago
        Arguing about consistency in a system without the rule of law seems a bit foolish as well. Diplomats are a more interesting edge case. And AFAIK they can always be prosecuted and convicted in their home country.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        That can be abused as well. Just frame the leader for a crime and he sits in prison until it is proved that he is innocent, then do so again for a different crime. For the above assume the leader is actually glorious, though of course most leaders who are called glorious are awful (IMHO)
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I feel like that supports what I wrote.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Or make it so glorious leader is not above the law.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I’m generally pro-legalization, but there are many things that we hypothesize are safe but do not know the long-term effects of and, within living memory, have discovered that many things initially thought safe were not. People were taking X-ray images of shoe fit in department stores, we used thalidomide to treat morning sickness, etc. What society says is legal has an effect on how it is perceived and how frequently it’s accessed by minors, teens, young adults, and adults. Exercising a modicum of conservatism in approving all things that we think are safer than alcohol seems appropriate to me.
    - 999900000999 5y ago
      I can guarantee you the most dangerous part of using any substance is our legal system. Legalize everything for anyone 21 or older, and while we're at it, raise the enlistment age to 21. If you're old enough to die for this country, you should be old enough to light a j in it.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - WillPostForFood 5y ago
        And raise the voting age to 21 too?
        temp0826 5y ago
        I don't see a problem here, politics is probably bad for brain development. 25 might actually be more appropriate.
        rcpt 5y ago
        Voting age should be low. Maybe 8? 0 is good to I'm not kidding. Talk to any 8 year old and they're much more level headed compared to those 10x their age. But the current system is set up to crush them relying only on the good will of seniors to protect their future. This isn't a new idea btw https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruction-after-covid-votes-for-children-age-six-david-runciman https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruct...
  - geodel 5y ago
    Point was foolish consistency. I see an IT diktat that a function should not be longer than 100 lines. I would even go ahead and say seems reasonable for lot of cases. But to make it absolute would be foolish consistency.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    Consistency in how the law is applied is important, but not that the composite of all laws be absolutely fair relative to each other. That is "foolish consistency" because it's impossible except by very closed-minded fundamentalism. The idea that you find the "worst" thing that is legal and then repeal all laws against things which are "better" is not a viable legislative strategy.
    - kukx 5y ago
      Also the exceptions exist usually for a good reason. Trying to get rid of them without understanding it is a bad idea.
    - locallost 5y ago
      There is nothing foolish about treating things that are the same consistently. It would be foolish to grant animals citizenships to keep it consistent with humans, but just as e.g. human rights are applied consistently to people no matter where they come from or how they look like so should our policies to things be in general. Alcohol is a drug with a tremendous potential for harm, and if a society decides it wants to ban those, again there is nothing foolish in doing that consistently. But when looked at like that, it's clear there is not much rational in the way we regulate things. It's just a bunch of traditions and whims.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kergonath 5y ago
    Unless we have a perfect metric quantifying the “amount of harm” for every substance or practice, we will never have this kind of consistency. And then, there is the issue of harm to self versus harm to others, and how we can weight both aspects. Consistency is in the eye of the beholder. For some people, sex is just as bad as alcohol, and they include some kind of spiritual damage as “harm to self” in their analysis. These things are necessarily subjective. Psychological damage cannot be quantified either. So it follows that consistency is subjective, and even if a legal framework could be consistent from the point of view of a certain group of people by chance, it would not be consistent in the eyes of everyone.
  - dkarl 5y ago
    No two situations are the same, and demanding consistency at an arbitrary level of reasoning means disregarding everything you would see when looking closer. For example, banning something that has been legal for a long time is difficult because of the economic aftershocks and cultural resistance. If something new was invented that was just as harmful as alcohol, it might be best to ban it and leave alcohol legal. FWIW, I probably mostly agree with you on policy. Just wanted to chime in on why people might object to the reasoning.
    - pixl97 5y ago
      Also attempting to ban things that are both desirable and very easy to make is a great way to create an enormous criminal black market like we did with prohibition in the US.
- cies 5y ago
  Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it. There's a difference between an offense and a crime (in most countries). Making buying/selling/using some substances a crime is limiting freedom, and hence should only be a measure of last resort. So no "the alc lobby push for laws against weed" kind of story that ended up with the "reefer scare" tactic.
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
    > Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it. Many things are illegal not because a law has been passed against it, but because something seemed bad, was brought before a judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a precedent. That's what is called common law. Having a law created is a separate way that things can become illegal. That's what is called statutory law. Not all countries have common law.
    - cies 5y ago
      >but because something seemed bad, was brought before a judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a precedent Like growing MJ in yr garden?, gimme a break. Hoe can substance use ever become a crime under common law? Some penalty okay, but a crime???
- merpnderp 5y ago
  This kind of reasoning is perfect. You remember when alcohol was made illegal in the US? Remember the harm that caused from gangs, uneven police crackdowns on illegal bars, and such rampant criminality that alcohol was quickly re-legalized? The drug war is 100x worse. If we'd been consistent, we'd have dodged 50 years of a brutal drug war that has done so much damage to society, the rule of law, our democratic institutions, the role of police, basically everything, that it's hard to imagine the vacationing on the moon type of future we missed out on. Treating drug addiction like alcohol addiction and drug dealers like liquor stores, would have been the road less taken and would have made all the difference.
  - dataviz1000 5y ago
    Countering an Emerson quote with a Frost quote. Well done.
  - shawnz 5y ago
    The argument you are making here is not that drugs should be legalized for consistency's sake. The argument you are making is that drugs should be legalized because the dangers of prohibition outweigh the benefits. That is a completely different line of reasoning
    - merpnderp 5y ago
      If our threshold for badness is X and we apply that to alcohol, but don't apply that to drugs, then we're being inconsistent with how we apply our threshold for badness. You just had to take your argument a step further to see the consistency argument.
  - jasonhansel 5y ago
    That popular view of Prohibition--as an unmitigated failure that only created problems--may not be supported by historical evidence: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit... From that article: > Across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, the number of patients treated in Bellevue Hospital’s alcohol wards dropped from fifteen thousand a year before Prohibition to under six thousand in 1924. Nationally, cirrhosis deaths fell by more than a third between 1916 and 1929. In Detroit, arrests for drunkenness declined 90 percent during Prohibition’s first year. Domestic violence complaints fell by half.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  > Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. That's not the reasoning to legalize things. That's the reasoning used to filter out what we should consider further.
- funklute 5y ago
  > but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. It's a very good reason to at least change one of the two. Either make the worse thing legal, or criminalise the "better" thing. Arbitrary rules are never a good thing.
  - lostgame 5y ago
    >> Arbitrary rules are never a good thing. Any parent, ever - will be able to tell you this is a fact. If you think arbitrary rules can stick, wait until your kid hits the 'why'/'how come' phase. In this case, the government is the parent making an arbitrary rule and the people represent the 5-year-old kid asking why. Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'Because cocaine is bad for you.' Kid: 'But why? Isn't drinking bad for you?' Parent: 'Cocaine is worse.' Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'It's addictive and it ruins lives.' Kid: 'But doesn't alcohol do that too?' Parent: 'Well, yes...' Kid: 'So why is cocaine so much worse?' Parent: 'It just is! Just stop asking questions and listen to your parent.' This kind of shit stops a kid from respecting their parent, because they trust their parent to know what's good for them, and to have reasons behind rules and restrictions. Similarly, when the government starts making arbitrary decisions for us, but can't provide the logic behind it - and - worse - the evidence from the medical, scientific and psychology communities state the complete opposite - we lose respect for and faith in the government.
    - gwd 5y ago
      > Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' > Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'Because alcohol is legal and cocaine isn't; that has several consequences. 'Governmental regulations provide some confidence that alcohol is safe and as-advertised; there is no regulation of the manufacturing quality of cocaine. 'Buying alcohol brings you into close proximity to the liquor supply chain, all of whom can settle disputes by using the court system. Buying cocaine brings you in close proximity to the cocaine supply chain, all of whom can only settle disputes using violence. 'And of course there are no legal repercussions for the possession of alcohol; there are legal repercussions for the possession of cocaine.'
- kmonad 5y ago
  That is one amazing quote. Thanks for making it known to me.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  It’s not necessarily meant to be used as an argument as such. It could also be intended as a rhetorical device in order to force the opponent to concede on another point: Person A: We should legalize weed in order to be consistent [see above argument] Person B: Nonsense! Weed has harmful effects on society! Person A: Alcohol objectively harms society more than weed [insert citations here]. So you would agree that we should regulate alcohol more, yes?
- scotty79 5y ago
  It would at least give people some options and some would choose less harmful ones.
- diob 5y ago
  The reasoning used to put the policies in place on those "illegal" substances was hardly reasoning in the first place. So many countries have had great success with legalization, so what is your reasoning for so much caution? It's only continuing the legacy of pain.
- kazinator 5y ago
  > “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. Seems pretty excellent to me. Things should be arranged on numerically indexed scale from benign to deadly. We should identify a point on that scale where illegality begins, and everything to the left is legal.
- kortex 5y ago
  I'm fine with alcohol being the high water mark. We can fairly objectively rank the health and societal harms of various drugs. Hard to quantify, but straightforward to build an ordinal list. Caffeine, weed, basically all psychedelics, amphetamine, mdma, and tobacco all make the cut (the latter just barely). Coke, meth, heroin, unsurprisingly worse than alcohol, ought to have some distribution controls at the very least. Prescription opioids actually look surprisingly bad. At the very least, the US drug schedule system is completely out of whack with actual risks. There's tons of sched 1 drugs which are objectively safer than alcohol.
greenpresident 5y ago
David Nutt did important work in this area. See for example his scale of drug harmfulness here: (Edit: see archive link below) And https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673610614626 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361...
- infogulch 5y ago
  That pdf 403's. Here's an archive.org snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.ru/src/pdf/1109/lancetnorway.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.... Alcohol is one place behind street meth in Figure 1. Damn.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelbuckbee 5y ago
  That's interesting, I do wish it had a few more items on the "lower" end of the harm spectrum, just to help me gauge this better. Things like Caffeine, or the other "Energy Drink" supplements.
pkulak 5y ago
Do you really think it's worse than the current wave of synthetic opioids? I think I could even make a good case for cigarettes being worse than alcohol.
- michaelmior 5y ago
  The comment never claimed that alcohol is worse than synthetic opioids or cigarettes. The comment stated it is one of the worst drugs.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    "one of the" is weasel words.
- asteroidp 5y ago
  The two are actually on par with each other
- greenpresident 5y ago
  Parent is most likely basing their comment on the work of David Nutt, see my other comment on this thread.
- shafyy 5y ago
  Smoking is for sure worse than alcohol consumption: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by-risk-factor https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by-risk-... Global yearly deaths by smoking: 7.1 million Global yearly deaths by alcohol usage: 2.84 million
  - saberience 5y ago
    This doesn't include all of the other harmful effects from alcohol, like violence and injures. How much marital physical abuse happens due to alcohol? I'd rather have someone harm themselves from smoking then someone beat their wife while drunk.
trentnix 5y ago
While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue. Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse does that, whether it's treatment facilities or social groups like AA and Al-Anon. As they should. Every family I know has been affected in one way or another by drug or alcohol addiction and has firsthand knowledge that substance abuse must be treated like an illness and to forgive (but not forget) the damage it causes. So I'm not exactly sure your statement reflects reality.
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  It's not treated that way by society at large. Treat here not in the "provide medical care for" sense but in the "interpretation" sense, as in, "I know it's a polka, but I'm going to treat it like a waltz."
  - trentnix 5y ago
    Once again, I think that's a fun thing to see because it's always nice to dunk on the broader culture, but that's genuinely not been my experience. People are generally very understanding and considerate of substance abuse situations and the carnage that surrounds it. And it should be noted that while substance abuse is an illness and should be treated as such, it's not leukemia or muscular dystrophy. It requires an active participant to make a concerted effort to obtain and abuse an addictive, destructive substance. So it's no surprise that substance abuse might not be given the same level of sympathy.
- JshWright 5y ago
  "Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse" is a small percentage of the population as a whole, and a very, very small percentage of the people who make policy and resourcing decisions related to how substance abuse is handled. You may be in a particular microcosm that handles this well, but that is definitely not the universal experience (not by a long shot). I'd also dispute the "literally everyone" part of your comment, as I can think of countless examples of attempts at substance abuse treatment and support being actively harmful to the person struggling with addiction.
fleddr 5y ago
What is the value of "consistency" in this matter?
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Legal consistency has many benefits. The two that first come to mind are: • making it easier for non-experts to reason about the law • consistency is, in my experience, usually a property of fairness
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Let's keep it practical. Alcohol is here to stay and will not be prohibited. For historical reasons, culture, whatever...it stays. Yet other harmful substances are currently banned and you opt to unban them for...consistency. It's like saying when two countries are at war, why can't we all be at war? Seems "unfair".
cies 5y ago
> to at least be consistent. No not be a total joke as a gov't. I love the stories on "refer scare" and the prohibition (which has become some big historical period like the renaissance, merely by retarded gov't policy). And not like we're done with it. New Zealand is considering to ban tobacco sales to the next generation. What could probably go wrong with that? Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay? (this is not about prohibiting sales to kids -- which im cool with obviously -- but also to adults of the next generations, when they are of age).
- cies 5y ago
  We need a constitutional law prohibiting all victimless crime or this insanity will never end.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Most victimless crimes have victims, they’re just hard to singularly identify.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      No. Not even close. Most victimless crimes have literally no victim. There is no victim without some sort of harm. The reason we have speed limits and drugs are illegal is because if you go overboard enough with them there is a high likelihood of harm. In the vast majority of cases people don't go overboard and there is no actual victim though. These things are crimes because our system of justice is not good at punishing people for "going overboard" with the consistency and fairness we desire.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - kube-system 5y ago
        While I disagree with some victimless crimes, like drug possession, victimless crimes that put others at risk does victimize them. It’s the reason that shooting a shotgun down a busy street is (and should be) a crime even if you don’t hit anyone. Also, many violations of regulatory requirements are “victimless” but are entirely necessary cooperation for things to work properly, or to prevent consequential harm. Particularly for things where shared resources are used, like spectrum, roads, airports, the air we breathe, etc. Who is hurt when I blow a little bit of lead dust into the air? Probably no one, and certainly nobody identifiable. Who is hurt when everyone blows lead dust in the air? Potentially many, and still likely unidentifiable.
BirAdam 5y ago
All drugs should be decriminalized. Shooting people in drug raids is far worse for those people than are the drugs. Likewise, locking people in cages with other misfits, criminals, malcontents, and addicts isn’t smart (especially considering that drugs are in the prisons too). If the goal is truly harm reduction, people need to simply work to convince drug users to not use drugs (whether those are opioids, alcohol, tobacco, meth, whatever).
- RobertRoberts 5y ago
  Slippery slope. What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to protect people. There are no simple answers here.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    Have assaults gone up in the states where marijuana has been legalized?
    - RobertRoberts 5y ago
      I would argue that any drug that are depressants would have a different effect when high vs when the user is in withdrawl. Marijuana is considerably different than narcotics from my first hand experience/witness of it's effect on people. Dope heads don't jones for their next hit. But I have seen a sweet young naive young teen turn into a mugger from meth.
  - AQuantized 5y ago
    Arrest them for assault...? Basically every study or reasonable implementation of decriminalization has shown both fewer negative effects of drug use, and in many cases decreased drug use itself. So there is in fact a simple answer, and I think you'll find that drug laws were likely conceived much more cynically than for the protection of the common person.
    - 5y ago
jbirer 5y ago
Legalize medicinal meth.
- qwytw 5y ago
  Isn't it already legal if you have prescription? (In pill form ofcourse)
  - ejolto 5y ago
    Yes, it's sold under the brand name Desoxyn.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Please no. Back in the 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a summer. Building big box store type buildings. They pour the floor, then pour the walls on top of the floor, then tip the walls up and weld them together with metal flanges embedded in the concrete. Nearly everyone on the crew did meth (except like 2 guys, I was one). Often work would start like 3:00 AM to prevent rapid drying. No lunch to speak of. Expected to literally run on the job site from one task to another. I suppose there may have been potential labor complaints but they never happened or weren't investigated. It wasn't unusual for people to burn out and just not show up. That was part of the calculus I think by management. One guy fell asleep in his truck and could not be woken up (after presumably being up for a few days). I quit after a few months but later saw my (low level) supervisor at a restaurant. He was alone and didn't look good. He told me how his life had gotten increasingly out of control and he had tried to kill himself (before finding Jesus per his words). Company didn't care. They were making money. They turned a blind eye to what was going on. The human wreckage generated was awful however. You think if meth is legal over the counter this won't be more prevalent? I'm pretty sure it will. Meth kills, and not just the body.
bastardoperator 5y ago
I would consider it the worst or most powerful drug in terms of access, addiction and intoxication. It's literally poison, and what it can do to an individual I feel is unlike most other illicit substances.
- RobertRoberts 5y ago
  What about meth, fentanyl or oxycotin? (to name just a few) I would consider these more literal poison by comparison to alcohol by any objective manner. If they are all legal, then access/addiction/intoxication are not even close to compare to alcohol, they are all far worse.
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    They're not poison though based on they way they work with neuroreceptors whereas alcohol limits neurotransmission all together. None of them are good, and in excess they're both terrible.
    - RobertRoberts 5y ago
      An argument I have often heard is that everything can be poison based on the amount ingested. Therefore, if we can classify water as poison (which it can be) it sort of makes any of these simplistic comparisons moot.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Or glue sniffing? Alcohol is only a problem because some people do it so much. Alot of people I know drink all the time-- like several times a week. They could look a little younger but generally have passable bills of health. Also we have to question who's behind this statement. For all we know it's the PRC starting a new teetotalling campaign in their land.
kingkawn 5y ago
Alcohol is legal because the population would tear the society down if it weren’t. That’s it. None of the other drugs have that kind of following.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  Agreed. Banning it has been tried at least once, in the USA, and apparently it didn't work very well. There were too many people that wanted alcohol and were willing to defy government to have it. Government is at least partially (more in some countries than others) by consent of the governed. But also on the contrary to your "none of the other drugs" point, I can't think of any possible reason why cigarettes weren't outright banned 40 years ago, except that they have exactly the same mechanism keeping them legal.
caeril 5y ago
Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social anxiety. In all my (many) years, I have found no better path to becoming socially acceptable (even likable) to neurotypicals/extroverts than 3-4 shots of vodka. This is an unfortunate, but very real fact for many of us. I've heard good things about Phenibut, but (1) it's very difficult to obtain, and (2) it is also apparently habit-forming.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I’ve recently taken to trying Kava, which seems to be relatively popular among people trying to quit alcohol/benzos/etc. Supposedly it also helps with disinhibition and socialization, but admittedly I haven’t tried it in a social setting so I’m not sure myself. It certainly does relax me and chill me out though without the dumbing down of alcohol. Of course, by the things I’ve seen in those “pop-medical” sites that fill Google search results, you’d think it’s much more dangerous than alcohol.
  - jsonne 5y ago
    Kava is great and for sure is wonderful in a social setting. I've taken to Kava recently and enjoy it casually (1 to 2 times a week) as its a shorter duration than alcohol, I get no hangover, and while I relax I don't lose my inhibitions. I also have drank it at a kava bar and find it to be an enjoyable social experience where the atmosphere is very bar like. I'm not totally against alcohol but Kava for sure is underrated and scratches many of the same itches as it were. Highly recommended.
  - pmlamotte 5y ago
    Can definitely second kava. I went to a kava bar several times a few months ago and found it to be a great alcohol alternative. It also filled the niche of being a place where the atmosphere was more similar to a cafe so I could read a book or work on something in isolation, but without the downside of caffeine where you can't do that in the evening without ruining sleep quality. The social effects were definitely there. Like you said, the crowd was largely people trying to quit or who had quit alcohol or benzos along with a fair amount of neurodivergent people. Being able to set aside some of my social anxiety and talk with them is part of what led to me getting assessed and diagnosed for autism recently. The grandparent comment also mentioned phenibut which I find even more enjoyable, but like they said it can be habit forming and has a tolerance build up that limits safe use to once or twice a week.
ravenstine 5y ago
I agree with the point on consistency, but must substances be viewed through the lens of "abuse" and "mental health"? It's not clear if you are implying that use of alcohol is generally a form of drug abuse related to mental health. In fact I'm not sure we can adequately define what is "abuse" in this case. Take for instance Lemmy from Motorhead, who used alcohol and drugs heavily throughout his life and probably died an early death as a result; can that really be considered abuse when he, pardon my French, didn't give a shit? For some people, things like alcohol are a serious issue and overuse can stem from both physical and psychological addiction. Then you've got people who use it sparingly. And yet there are people who drink heavily, know exactly what they're doing, and can't easily be classified as addicts without projecting one's own life choices unto them.
reaperducer 5y ago
Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. I've never understood the arguments like yours, which I used to hear a half-century ago in high school, and now see presented online. They distill down to "We allow this one bad thing, so we should allow all of the other bad things, too." As if having more bad things is better than having fewer bad things. I don't drink, so I don't care if alcohol gets banned or restricted or whatever. But these type of arguments always strike me as little more than "Billy jumped off the bridge, so I can, too!" I really don't see the logic here.
- jcadam 5y ago
  Banning alcohol didn't work out so well the last time we tried it and I seriously doubt it would go any better if we tried it again now.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
If alcohol in moderation is so bad then why is it taking so long to prove it?
mc32 5y ago
There is such thing as a slippery slope and a dam that overruneth. We’ve inherited use of alcohol over millennia —it’d be an uphill battle to rid ourselves of it short of fundamentalist dogmatism. Some places in Central Asia have socialized opiate usage —but they too have unwritten rules about usage, or at least traditionally had them observed (it was a ‘luxury’ of old age). If you allow an anything goes policy, you’ll end up with a decaying society. While I don’t propose prosecuting consumption because it’s the wrong focus, we should prosecute production and distribution of hard drugs. Else you may end up with the likes of XIX century in China, or huffers in metro Manila.
mountainriver 5y ago
Two bad things is worse than one bad thing unfortunately, but yes I agree that alcohol is one of the worst
jancsika 5y ago
Just to show how facile this reasoning is, let's flip the bit: "Alcohol is one of the worst 'drugs' on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should make sure we keep other drugs illegal by default unless shown individually, through decades of research, to be safe. Otherwise we will burden our healthcare system and create a national catastrophe. As evidence of this danger, I submit the history of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and liver disease, and their effects on our healthcare system." I offer that you can only do one of two things now: 1. Argue against my advocacy for inconsistency using personal incredulity 2. Provide a deeper argument that relies on something more than an appeal to consistency Edit: added a clause to sweeten my argument for inconsistency
blfr 5y ago
> we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent This argument is brought up fairly regularly but I don't think it's very good. We cannot go back on alcohol, Americans tried pretty hard. Our choice is limited to alcohol or alcohol plus whatever we legalize. Harm from alcohol is the hard lower bound on harm from substance use.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
I hate the term "legalize" because all things are legal (in the U.S.A.) until they are made illegal. "Legalize" verbiage constantly tells people that they have to be selectively given rights, not selectively taken away.
lenkite 5y ago
Yep! We should legalize 'political' drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin too.
drinchev 5y ago
Well I think there are far more dangerous substances than alcohol which are considered legal and advertised. Eating sugar for example in excessive amounts leads to way worse diseases - https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-your-body https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-yo....
jeffbee 5y ago
The worst thing about alcohol today is how America is letting alcoholics dictate pandemic responses, as if we believe that bars are more important than schools.
bumby 5y ago
>to at least be consistent. Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. So I don't think "we allow one bad thing and we can't get rid of it, so let's allow all bad things" makes a particularly compelling argument. (FWIW, I'm generally not against legalization nor do I think all drugs are net-negative. I just find the argument as laid out to be unconvincing.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. It was recognized as impractical fairly quickly, despite having fairly similar concrete outcomes to the drug war, for which a similar recognition has been much slower and less complete. But, again, that's just another layer of inconsistency in the same direction, not a mitigation of it.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Again, I'm not against legalization. But I'd like to see more concrete mitigation of the downsides. Just stating that we should aim for consistency does nothing about the blowback. "Legalize it to be consistent" seems as facile a solution as "Prohibit it because it can be dangerous" in that they ignore the complexities of implementation.
lm28469 5y ago
> Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale Addiction is, not alcohol in itself. I haven't been anywhere close to drunk in a decade. I still enjoy a glass of whisky or a cold beer here and there. People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait. I've seen the damage of weed in my friends, it's just as bad as alcohol tbh. I never understood the "it's bad so let's legalise other bad things"
- helloworld11 5y ago
  >People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait. You're blatantly assuming here and making it a categorical statement. They usually don't, neither statistically or at least in my experience, anecdotally. I and many friends of mine regularly drink, but most of us barely touch other drugs. Weed occasionally for some of my friends (I personally dislike it intensely) but things like coke and so forth, pretty much nothing, in a wide group of people who are regular consumers of alcohol.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue.

matthewfcarlson 5y ago

I would much rather legalize pot over alcohol being illegal. If alcohol had the same usage as pot we would have far fewer deaths. My only complaint is that pot smells awful (though alcohol isn’t much better).

golemotron 5y ago

This comes from the point of view that harm is a scalar quantity. There are many different dimensions of harm and they vary wildly for each activity/drug. Reality is more nuanced than any single measure we select.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

> if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. Please do not decide policy using this kind of reasoning. Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. > A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Consistency in legal matters seems like a good and necessary thing for ensuring fairness. What is the basis for Emerson’s quote to apply here?
- mlac 5y ago
  Statesmen saying “alcohol is legal, might as well legalize everything else that is less harmful on some dimension”. Where the alternative may be just leaving alcohol as an exception, or outlawing it (but yeah… don’t mess with Americans and their Alcohol - see prohibition and the whiskey rebellion).
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Suppose the law states that David Haroldson (or the Glorious Leader, or foreign diplomats) cannot be convicted of any crime. That's inconsistent, (perhaps) arbitrary, and unfair. Yet, it would be foolish to extend this conviction-immunity to everybody.
  - virgildotcodes 5y ago
    For the sake of consistency, wouldn’t it be desirable for the glorious leader to be subject to the same legal punishments as the masses?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      That's his point.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        Arguing about consistency in a system without the rule of law seems a bit foolish as well. Diplomats are a more interesting edge case. And AFAIK they can always be prosecuted and convicted in their home country.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      That can be abused as well. Just frame the leader for a crime and he sits in prison until it is proved that he is innocent, then do so again for a different crime. For the above assume the leader is actually glorious, though of course most leaders who are called glorious are awful (IMHO)
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I feel like that supports what I wrote.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Or make it so glorious leader is not above the law.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’m generally pro-legalization, but there are many things that we hypothesize are safe but do not know the long-term effects of and, within living memory, have discovered that many things initially thought safe were not. People were taking X-ray images of shoe fit in department stores, we used thalidomide to treat morning sickness, etc. What society says is legal has an effect on how it is perceived and how frequently it’s accessed by minors, teens, young adults, and adults. Exercising a modicum of conservatism in approving all things that we think are safer than alcohol seems appropriate to me.
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    I can guarantee you the most dangerous part of using any substance is our legal system. Legalize everything for anyone 21 or older, and while we're at it, raise the enlistment age to 21. If you're old enough to die for this country, you should be old enough to light a j in it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - WillPostForFood 5y ago
      And raise the voting age to 21 too?
      - temp0826 5y ago
        I don't see a problem here, politics is probably bad for brain development. 25 might actually be more appropriate.
      - rcpt 5y ago
        Voting age should be low. Maybe 8? 0 is good to I'm not kidding. Talk to any 8 year old and they're much more level headed compared to those 10x their age. But the current system is set up to crush them relying only on the good will of seniors to protect their future. This isn't a new idea btw https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruction-after-covid-votes-for-children-age-six-david-runciman https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/reconstruct...
- geodel 5y ago
  Point was foolish consistency. I see an IT diktat that a function should not be longer than 100 lines. I would even go ahead and say seems reasonable for lot of cases. But to make it absolute would be foolish consistency.
- dasil003 5y ago
  Consistency in how the law is applied is important, but not that the composite of all laws be absolutely fair relative to each other. That is "foolish consistency" because it's impossible except by very closed-minded fundamentalism. The idea that you find the "worst" thing that is legal and then repeal all laws against things which are "better" is not a viable legislative strategy.
  - kukx 5y ago
    Also the exceptions exist usually for a good reason. Trying to get rid of them without understanding it is a bad idea.
  - locallost 5y ago
    There is nothing foolish about treating things that are the same consistently. It would be foolish to grant animals citizenships to keep it consistent with humans, but just as e.g. human rights are applied consistently to people no matter where they come from or how they look like so should our policies to things be in general. Alcohol is a drug with a tremendous potential for harm, and if a society decides it wants to ban those, again there is nothing foolish in doing that consistently. But when looked at like that, it's clear there is not much rational in the way we regulate things. It's just a bunch of traditions and whims.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kergonath 5y ago
  Unless we have a perfect metric quantifying the “amount of harm” for every substance or practice, we will never have this kind of consistency. And then, there is the issue of harm to self versus harm to others, and how we can weight both aspects. Consistency is in the eye of the beholder. For some people, sex is just as bad as alcohol, and they include some kind of spiritual damage as “harm to self” in their analysis. These things are necessarily subjective. Psychological damage cannot be quantified either. So it follows that consistency is subjective, and even if a legal framework could be consistent from the point of view of a certain group of people by chance, it would not be consistent in the eyes of everyone.
- dkarl 5y ago
  No two situations are the same, and demanding consistency at an arbitrary level of reasoning means disregarding everything you would see when looking closer. For example, banning something that has been legal for a long time is difficult because of the economic aftershocks and cultural resistance. If something new was invented that was just as harmful as alcohol, it might be best to ban it and leave alcohol legal. FWIW, I probably mostly agree with you on policy. Just wanted to chime in on why people might object to the reasoning.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    Also attempting to ban things that are both desirable and very easy to make is a great way to create an enormous criminal black market like we did with prohibition in the US.
cies 5y ago
Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it. There's a difference between an offense and a crime (in most countries). Making buying/selling/using some substances a crime is limiting freedom, and hence should only be a measure of last resort. So no "the alc lobby push for laws against weed" kind of story that ended up with the "reefer scare" tactic.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  > Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it. Many things are illegal not because a law has been passed against it, but because something seemed bad, was brought before a judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a precedent. That's what is called common law. Having a law created is a separate way that things can become illegal. That's what is called statutory law. Not all countries have common law.
  - cies 5y ago
    >but because something seemed bad, was brought before a judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a precedent Like growing MJ in yr garden?, gimme a break. Hoe can substance use ever become a crime under common law? Some penalty okay, but a crime???
merpnderp 5y ago
This kind of reasoning is perfect. You remember when alcohol was made illegal in the US? Remember the harm that caused from gangs, uneven police crackdowns on illegal bars, and such rampant criminality that alcohol was quickly re-legalized? The drug war is 100x worse. If we'd been consistent, we'd have dodged 50 years of a brutal drug war that has done so much damage to society, the rule of law, our democratic institutions, the role of police, basically everything, that it's hard to imagine the vacationing on the moon type of future we missed out on. Treating drug addiction like alcohol addiction and drug dealers like liquor stores, would have been the road less taken and would have made all the difference.
- dataviz1000 5y ago
  Countering an Emerson quote with a Frost quote. Well done.
- shawnz 5y ago
  The argument you are making here is not that drugs should be legalized for consistency's sake. The argument you are making is that drugs should be legalized because the dangers of prohibition outweigh the benefits. That is a completely different line of reasoning
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    If our threshold for badness is X and we apply that to alcohol, but don't apply that to drugs, then we're being inconsistent with how we apply our threshold for badness. You just had to take your argument a step further to see the consistency argument.
- jasonhansel 5y ago
  That popular view of Prohibition--as an unmitigated failure that only created problems--may not be supported by historical evidence: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit... From that article: > Across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, the number of patients treated in Bellevue Hospital’s alcohol wards dropped from fifteen thousand a year before Prohibition to under six thousand in 1924. Nationally, cirrhosis deaths fell by more than a third between 1916 and 1929. In Detroit, arrests for drunkenness declined 90 percent during Prohibition’s first year. Domestic violence complaints fell by half.
jasonlotito 5y ago
> Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. That's not the reasoning to legalize things. That's the reasoning used to filter out what we should consider further.
funklute 5y ago
> but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. It's a very good reason to at least change one of the two. Either make the worse thing legal, or criminalise the "better" thing. Arbitrary rules are never a good thing.
- lostgame 5y ago
  >> Arbitrary rules are never a good thing. Any parent, ever - will be able to tell you this is a fact. If you think arbitrary rules can stick, wait until your kid hits the 'why'/'how come' phase. In this case, the government is the parent making an arbitrary rule and the people represent the 5-year-old kid asking why. Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'Because cocaine is bad for you.' Kid: 'But why? Isn't drinking bad for you?' Parent: 'Cocaine is worse.' Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'It's addictive and it ruins lives.' Kid: 'But doesn't alcohol do that too?' Parent: 'Well, yes...' Kid: 'So why is cocaine so much worse?' Parent: 'It just is! Just stop asking questions and listen to your parent.' This kind of shit stops a kid from respecting their parent, because they trust their parent to know what's good for them, and to have reasons behind rules and restrictions. Similarly, when the government starts making arbitrary decisions for us, but can't provide the logic behind it - and - worse - the evidence from the medical, scientific and psychology communities state the complete opposite - we lose respect for and faith in the government.
  - gwd 5y ago
    > Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' > Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'Because alcohol is legal and cocaine isn't; that has several consequences. 'Governmental regulations provide some confidence that alcohol is safe and as-advertised; there is no regulation of the manufacturing quality of cocaine. 'Buying alcohol brings you into close proximity to the liquor supply chain, all of whom can settle disputes by using the court system. Buying cocaine brings you in close proximity to the cocaine supply chain, all of whom can only settle disputes using violence. 'And of course there are no legal repercussions for the possession of alcohol; there are legal repercussions for the possession of cocaine.'
kmonad 5y ago
That is one amazing quote. Thanks for making it known to me.
avgcorrection 5y ago
It’s not necessarily meant to be used as an argument as such. It could also be intended as a rhetorical device in order to force the opponent to concede on another point: Person A: We should legalize weed in order to be consistent [see above argument] Person B: Nonsense! Weed has harmful effects on society! Person A: Alcohol objectively harms society more than weed [insert citations here]. So you would agree that we should regulate alcohol more, yes?
scotty79 5y ago
It would at least give people some options and some would choose less harmful ones.
diob 5y ago
The reasoning used to put the policies in place on those "illegal" substances was hardly reasoning in the first place. So many countries have had great success with legalization, so what is your reasoning for so much caution? It's only continuing the legacy of pain.
kazinator 5y ago
> “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. Seems pretty excellent to me. Things should be arranged on numerically indexed scale from benign to deadly. We should identify a point on that scale where illegality begins, and everything to the left is legal.
kortex 5y ago
I'm fine with alcohol being the high water mark. We can fairly objectively rank the health and societal harms of various drugs. Hard to quantify, but straightforward to build an ordinal list. Caffeine, weed, basically all psychedelics, amphetamine, mdma, and tobacco all make the cut (the latter just barely). Coke, meth, heroin, unsurprisingly worse than alcohol, ought to have some distribution controls at the very least. Prescription opioids actually look surprisingly bad. At the very least, the US drug schedule system is completely out of whack with actual risks. There's tons of sched 1 drugs which are objectively safer than alcohol.

greenpresident 5y ago

David Nutt did important work in this area. See for example his scale of drug harmfulness here: (Edit: see archive link below) And https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673610614626 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361...

infogulch 5y ago
That pdf 403's. Here's an archive.org snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.ru/src/pdf/1109/lancetnorway.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.... Alcohol is one place behind street meth in Figure 1. Damn.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
michaelbuckbee 5y ago
That's interesting, I do wish it had a few more items on the "lower" end of the harm spectrum, just to help me gauge this better. Things like Caffeine, or the other "Energy Drink" supplements.

pkulak 5y ago

Do you really think it's worse than the current wave of synthetic opioids? I think I could even make a good case for cigarettes being worse than alcohol.

michaelmior 5y ago
The comment never claimed that alcohol is worse than synthetic opioids or cigarettes. The comment stated it is one of the worst drugs.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  "one of the" is weasel words.
asteroidp 5y ago
The two are actually on par with each other
greenpresident 5y ago
Parent is most likely basing their comment on the work of David Nutt, see my other comment on this thread.
shafyy 5y ago
Smoking is for sure worse than alcohol consumption: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by-risk-factor https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by-risk-... Global yearly deaths by smoking: 7.1 million Global yearly deaths by alcohol usage: 2.84 million
- saberience 5y ago
  This doesn't include all of the other harmful effects from alcohol, like violence and injures. How much marital physical abuse happens due to alcohol? I'd rather have someone harm themselves from smoking then someone beat their wife while drunk.

trentnix 5y ago

While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue. Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse does that, whether it's treatment facilities or social groups like AA and Al-Anon. As they should. Every family I know has been affected in one way or another by drug or alcohol addiction and has firsthand knowledge that substance abuse must be treated like an illness and to forgive (but not forget) the damage it causes. So I'm not exactly sure your statement reflects reality.

hiptobecubic 5y ago
It's not treated that way by society at large. Treat here not in the "provide medical care for" sense but in the "interpretation" sense, as in, "I know it's a polka, but I'm going to treat it like a waltz."
- trentnix 5y ago
  Once again, I think that's a fun thing to see because it's always nice to dunk on the broader culture, but that's genuinely not been my experience. People are generally very understanding and considerate of substance abuse situations and the carnage that surrounds it. And it should be noted that while substance abuse is an illness and should be treated as such, it's not leukemia or muscular dystrophy. It requires an active participant to make a concerted effort to obtain and abuse an addictive, destructive substance. So it's no surprise that substance abuse might not be given the same level of sympathy.
JshWright 5y ago
"Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse" is a small percentage of the population as a whole, and a very, very small percentage of the people who make policy and resourcing decisions related to how substance abuse is handled. You may be in a particular microcosm that handles this well, but that is definitely not the universal experience (not by a long shot). I'd also dispute the "literally everyone" part of your comment, as I can think of countless examples of attempts at substance abuse treatment and support being actively harmful to the person struggling with addiction.

fleddr 5y ago

What is the value of "consistency" in this matter?

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Legal consistency has many benefits. The two that first come to mind are: • making it easier for non-experts to reason about the law • consistency is, in my experience, usually a property of fairness
- fleddr 5y ago
  Let's keep it practical. Alcohol is here to stay and will not be prohibited. For historical reasons, culture, whatever...it stays. Yet other harmful substances are currently banned and you opt to unban them for...consistency. It's like saying when two countries are at war, why can't we all be at war? Seems "unfair".

cies 5y ago

> to at least be consistent. No not be a total joke as a gov't. I love the stories on "refer scare" and the prohibition (which has become some big historical period like the renaissance, merely by retarded gov't policy). And not like we're done with it. New Zealand is considering to ban tobacco sales to the next generation. What could probably go wrong with that? Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay? (this is not about prohibiting sales to kids -- which im cool with obviously -- but also to adults of the next generations, when they are of age).

cies 5y ago
We need a constitutional law prohibiting all victimless crime or this insanity will never end.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Most victimless crimes have victims, they’re just hard to singularly identify.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    No. Not even close. Most victimless crimes have literally no victim. There is no victim without some sort of harm. The reason we have speed limits and drugs are illegal is because if you go overboard enough with them there is a high likelihood of harm. In the vast majority of cases people don't go overboard and there is no actual victim though. These things are crimes because our system of justice is not good at punishing people for "going overboard" with the consistency and fairness we desire.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kube-system 5y ago
      While I disagree with some victimless crimes, like drug possession, victimless crimes that put others at risk does victimize them. It’s the reason that shooting a shotgun down a busy street is (and should be) a crime even if you don’t hit anyone. Also, many violations of regulatory requirements are “victimless” but are entirely necessary cooperation for things to work properly, or to prevent consequential harm. Particularly for things where shared resources are used, like spectrum, roads, airports, the air we breathe, etc. Who is hurt when I blow a little bit of lead dust into the air? Probably no one, and certainly nobody identifiable. Who is hurt when everyone blows lead dust in the air? Potentially many, and still likely unidentifiable.

BirAdam 5y ago

All drugs should be decriminalized. Shooting people in drug raids is far worse for those people than are the drugs. Likewise, locking people in cages with other misfits, criminals, malcontents, and addicts isn’t smart (especially considering that drugs are in the prisons too). If the goal is truly harm reduction, people need to simply work to convince drug users to not use drugs (whether those are opioids, alcohol, tobacco, meth, whatever).

RobertRoberts 5y ago
Slippery slope. What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to protect people. There are no simple answers here.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Have assaults gone up in the states where marijuana has been legalized?
  - RobertRoberts 5y ago
    I would argue that any drug that are depressants would have a different effect when high vs when the user is in withdrawl. Marijuana is considerably different than narcotics from my first hand experience/witness of it's effect on people. Dope heads don't jones for their next hit. But I have seen a sweet young naive young teen turn into a mugger from meth.
- AQuantized 5y ago
  Arrest them for assault...? Basically every study or reasonable implementation of decriminalization has shown both fewer negative effects of drug use, and in many cases decreased drug use itself. So there is in fact a simple answer, and I think you'll find that drug laws were likely conceived much more cynically than for the protection of the common person.
  - 5y ago

jbirer 5y ago

Legalize medicinal meth.

qwytw 5y ago
Isn't it already legal if you have prescription? (In pill form ofcourse)
- ejolto 5y ago
  Yes, it's sold under the brand name Desoxyn.
mythrwy 5y ago
Please no. Back in the 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a summer. Building big box store type buildings. They pour the floor, then pour the walls on top of the floor, then tip the walls up and weld them together with metal flanges embedded in the concrete. Nearly everyone on the crew did meth (except like 2 guys, I was one). Often work would start like 3:00 AM to prevent rapid drying. No lunch to speak of. Expected to literally run on the job site from one task to another. I suppose there may have been potential labor complaints but they never happened or weren't investigated. It wasn't unusual for people to burn out and just not show up. That was part of the calculus I think by management. One guy fell asleep in his truck and could not be woken up (after presumably being up for a few days). I quit after a few months but later saw my (low level) supervisor at a restaurant. He was alone and didn't look good. He told me how his life had gotten increasingly out of control and he had tried to kill himself (before finding Jesus per his words). Company didn't care. They were making money. They turned a blind eye to what was going on. The human wreckage generated was awful however. You think if meth is legal over the counter this won't be more prevalent? I'm pretty sure it will. Meth kills, and not just the body.

bastardoperator 5y ago

I would consider it the worst or most powerful drug in terms of access, addiction and intoxication. It's literally poison, and what it can do to an individual I feel is unlike most other illicit substances.

RobertRoberts 5y ago
What about meth, fentanyl or oxycotin? (to name just a few) I would consider these more literal poison by comparison to alcohol by any objective manner. If they are all legal, then access/addiction/intoxication are not even close to compare to alcohol, they are all far worse.
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  They're not poison though based on they way they work with neuroreceptors whereas alcohol limits neurotransmission all together. None of them are good, and in excess they're both terrible.
  - RobertRoberts 5y ago
    An argument I have often heard is that everything can be poison based on the amount ingested. Therefore, if we can classify water as poison (which it can be) it sort of makes any of these simplistic comparisons moot.
hungryforcodes 5y ago
Or glue sniffing? Alcohol is only a problem because some people do it so much. Alot of people I know drink all the time-- like several times a week. They could look a little younger but generally have passable bills of health. Also we have to question who's behind this statement. For all we know it's the PRC starting a new teetotalling campaign in their land.

kingkawn 5y ago

Alcohol is legal because the population would tear the society down if it weren’t. That’s it. None of the other drugs have that kind of following.

mnw21cam 5y ago
Agreed. Banning it has been tried at least once, in the USA, and apparently it didn't work very well. There were too many people that wanted alcohol and were willing to defy government to have it. Government is at least partially (more in some countries than others) by consent of the governed. But also on the contrary to your "none of the other drugs" point, I can't think of any possible reason why cigarettes weren't outright banned 40 years ago, except that they have exactly the same mechanism keeping them legal.

caeril 5y ago

Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social anxiety. In all my (many) years, I have found no better path to becoming socially acceptable (even likable) to neurotypicals/extroverts than 3-4 shots of vodka. This is an unfortunate, but very real fact for many of us. I've heard good things about Phenibut, but (1) it's very difficult to obtain, and (2) it is also apparently habit-forming.

the_only_law 5y ago
I’ve recently taken to trying Kava, which seems to be relatively popular among people trying to quit alcohol/benzos/etc. Supposedly it also helps with disinhibition and socialization, but admittedly I haven’t tried it in a social setting so I’m not sure myself. It certainly does relax me and chill me out though without the dumbing down of alcohol. Of course, by the things I’ve seen in those “pop-medical” sites that fill Google search results, you’d think it’s much more dangerous than alcohol.
- jsonne 5y ago
  Kava is great and for sure is wonderful in a social setting. I've taken to Kava recently and enjoy it casually (1 to 2 times a week) as its a shorter duration than alcohol, I get no hangover, and while I relax I don't lose my inhibitions. I also have drank it at a kava bar and find it to be an enjoyable social experience where the atmosphere is very bar like. I'm not totally against alcohol but Kava for sure is underrated and scratches many of the same itches as it were. Highly recommended.
- pmlamotte 5y ago
  Can definitely second kava. I went to a kava bar several times a few months ago and found it to be a great alcohol alternative. It also filled the niche of being a place where the atmosphere was more similar to a cafe so I could read a book or work on something in isolation, but without the downside of caffeine where you can't do that in the evening without ruining sleep quality. The social effects were definitely there. Like you said, the crowd was largely people trying to quit or who had quit alcohol or benzos along with a fair amount of neurodivergent people. Being able to set aside some of my social anxiety and talk with them is part of what led to me getting assessed and diagnosed for autism recently. The grandparent comment also mentioned phenibut which I find even more enjoyable, but like they said it can be habit forming and has a tolerance build up that limits safe use to once or twice a week.

ravenstine 5y ago

I agree with the point on consistency, but must substances be viewed through the lens of "abuse" and "mental health"? It's not clear if you are implying that use of alcohol is generally a form of drug abuse related to mental health. In fact I'm not sure we can adequately define what is "abuse" in this case. Take for instance Lemmy from Motorhead, who used alcohol and drugs heavily throughout his life and probably died an early death as a result; can that really be considered abuse when he, pardon my French, didn't give a shit? For some people, things like alcohol are a serious issue and overuse can stem from both physical and psychological addiction. Then you've got people who use it sparingly. And yet there are people who drink heavily, know exactly what they're doing, and can't easily be classified as addicts without projecting one's own life choices unto them.

reaperducer 5y ago

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. I've never understood the arguments like yours, which I used to hear a half-century ago in high school, and now see presented online. They distill down to "We allow this one bad thing, so we should allow all of the other bad things, too." As if having more bad things is better than having fewer bad things. I don't drink, so I don't care if alcohol gets banned or restricted or whatever. But these type of arguments always strike me as little more than "Billy jumped off the bridge, so I can, too!" I really don't see the logic here.

jcadam 5y ago
Banning alcohol didn't work out so well the last time we tried it and I seriously doubt it would go any better if we tried it again now.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

If alcohol in moderation is so bad then why is it taking so long to prove it?

mc32 5y ago

There is such thing as a slippery slope and a dam that overruneth. We’ve inherited use of alcohol over millennia —it’d be an uphill battle to rid ourselves of it short of fundamentalist dogmatism. Some places in Central Asia have socialized opiate usage —but they too have unwritten rules about usage, or at least traditionally had them observed (it was a ‘luxury’ of old age). If you allow an anything goes policy, you’ll end up with a decaying society. While I don’t propose prosecuting consumption because it’s the wrong focus, we should prosecute production and distribution of hard drugs. Else you may end up with the likes of XIX century in China, or huffers in metro Manila.

mountainriver 5y ago

Two bad things is worse than one bad thing unfortunately, but yes I agree that alcohol is one of the worst

jancsika 5y ago

Just to show how facile this reasoning is, let's flip the bit: "Alcohol is one of the worst 'drugs' on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should make sure we keep other drugs illegal by default unless shown individually, through decades of research, to be safe. Otherwise we will burden our healthcare system and create a national catastrophe. As evidence of this danger, I submit the history of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and liver disease, and their effects on our healthcare system." I offer that you can only do one of two things now: 1. Argue against my advocacy for inconsistency using personal incredulity 2. Provide a deeper argument that relies on something more than an appeal to consistency Edit: added a clause to sweeten my argument for inconsistency

blfr 5y ago

> we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent This argument is brought up fairly regularly but I don't think it's very good. We cannot go back on alcohol, Americans tried pretty hard. Our choice is limited to alcohol or alcohol plus whatever we legalize. Harm from alcohol is the hard lower bound on harm from substance use.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

I hate the term "legalize" because all things are legal (in the U.S.A.) until they are made illegal. "Legalize" verbiage constantly tells people that they have to be selectively given rights, not selectively taken away.

lenkite 5y ago

Yep! We should legalize 'political' drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin too.

drinchev 5y ago

Well I think there are far more dangerous substances than alcohol which are considered legal and advertised. Eating sugar for example in excessive amounts leads to way worse diseases - https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-your-body https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-yo....

jeffbee 5y ago

The worst thing about alcohol today is how America is letting alcoholics dictate pandemic responses, as if we believe that bars are more important than schools.

bumby 5y ago

>to at least be consistent. Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. So I don't think "we allow one bad thing and we can't get rid of it, so let's allow all bad things" makes a particularly compelling argument. (FWIW, I'm generally not against legalization nor do I think all drugs are net-negative. I just find the argument as laid out to be unconvincing.)

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. It was recognized as impractical fairly quickly, despite having fairly similar concrete outcomes to the drug war, for which a similar recognition has been much slower and less complete. But, again, that's just another layer of inconsistency in the same direction, not a mitigation of it.
- bumby 5y ago
  Again, I'm not against legalization. But I'd like to see more concrete mitigation of the downsides. Just stating that we should aim for consistency does nothing about the blowback. "Legalize it to be consistent" seems as facile a solution as "Prohibit it because it can be dangerous" in that they ignore the complexities of implementation.

lm28469 5y ago

> Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale Addiction is, not alcohol in itself. I haven't been anywhere close to drunk in a decade. I still enjoy a glass of whisky or a cold beer here and there. People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait. I've seen the damage of weed in my friends, it's just as bad as alcohol tbh. I never understood the "it's bad so let's legalise other bad things"

helloworld11 5y ago
>People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait. You're blatantly assuming here and making it a categorical statement. They usually don't, neither statistically or at least in my experience, anecdotally. I and many friends of mine regularly drink, but most of us barely touch other drugs. Weed occasionally for some of my friends (I personally dislike it intensely) but things like coke and so forth, pretty much nothing, in a wide group of people who are regular consumers of alcohol.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]