3 ms·

> We have no empirical proof that the permissive extreme works. Alcohol. We have plenty of empirical proof that Prohibition doesn't work.

anon291 3y ago
Prohibition worked by basically all measures. Cirrhosis rates were down. Violence overall was actually down. Child abuse was down. 100s of thousands of people were saved due to prohibition of alcohol. I'm not even in favor of alcohol prohibition but denying it saved lives goes completely against all data.
- throwup238 3y ago
  What data? I'd love to see your sources for "100s of thousands of people were saved due to prohibition of alcohol." You should update the wikipedia article with those sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_Prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_Prohibition
  - anon291 3y ago
    You should read actual data instead of Wikipedia https://www.nber.org/papers/w9681 https://www.nber.org/papers/w9681 <- cirrhosis declined 20 percent https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/13/1/1/183009 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/13/1/1/183009 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/16/2/433/168495 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/16/2/433/168495 <- prohibition associated with up to 30 percent reduction in violent crime https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0144818815000587 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01448... <- another researcher with similar findings. The common cultural belief that prohibition failed is a total myth. It achieved everything it set out to achieve. People just wanted to drink. There's actually very little evidence of the supposed ills of prohibition. For example, organized crime is typically said to have been caused by prohibition, but there were other factors at play as well (immigration, economics, etc). Harder liquor being available is another one, and this is true. Cirrhosis severity increased during prohibition but the drop in cirrhosis rates more than made up for that.
    - emporas 3y ago
      Criminals due to prohibition, i.e. drinkers of alcohol, should report to the prohibitor, cirrhosis, which a very good and clear sign of alcohol consumption, indicative of their criminal behavior? A pregnant unmarried young woman of muslim religion, should report to her parents she is pregnant, indicative of sexual behavior with no one claiming legal status as her husband? That's prohibited, why should she do it? I mean, a criminal reporting their own crimes to the prohibitor, doesn't sound like a very bright move to say the least. I know personally people who drink alcohol a lot, their friends, family and social circles usually drink as well. Not always but increased probability. As soon as i meet a cousin of mine 3 times a week, and he gets busted for alcohol then i know i am next. So why should i let him report his own disease?
      - anon291 3y ago
        Cirrhosis kills, so the data is pretty 'fair', unless you're claiming there are piles of unnamed, uncertified dead people who died of cirrhosis during prohibition but were not autopsied. The data showing cirrhosis decreased is counting cirrhosis deaths as reported by hospitals getting indigent bodies. Several hospitals went from handling thousands of indigent cirrhosis deaths to handling a few hundred. You can't hide dead people easily. Where is your pile of bodies?
        emporas 3y ago
        > You can't hide dead people easily. Yes you can. You can change their cause of death. Covid proved, this can be very easily achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people with wrong and misleading cause of death. When the doctor is intimidated because he will be fired or he will be beat up by thugs then you put in the cause of death anything you like. A doctor can be intimidated by FDA thugs who revoke licenses, or beat up street thugs with the same effect. I know personally one doctor who does autopsies. Autopsies are far from rigorous. Usually people care about a person while he is still alive, as soon as his soul flies away to some remote heaven no one cares. Especially when that person is drinking for decades, usually everyone knows what the cause was, his family, his friends, it is not rocket science. I didn't read the citations, it is many hours of study, but if any of the above is in question, i can give pretty lengthy citations about Covid and cause of death. A lot of research is pretty widely known.
55555 3y ago
Prohibition works great in Singapore.
- eru 3y ago
  It's still quite possible to get drugs here, but they tend to be more expensive. From a completely practical point of view, keeping poor people off drugs (and making rich people think twice) prevents most of the harm.
  - rangestransform 3y ago
    I wish the west was more open to elitist policy
    - eru 3y ago
      Well, I'm just describing the practical effects of the drug policy in Singapore. It's very similar in the West: poor people get busted for doing drugs much more than rich people do. Yes, I sometimes think policies could be made more efficiently, if they were to openly acknowledge the loopholes that exist for rich enough people, and just turn them into a saner official policies, instead of 'open-secret' accidents. Singapore has a good example for gambling: foreigners can just enter our casinos, but locals have to pay something like 200 dollars to enter. Just so that you are under no illusions that you could come out ahead on net by going to the casino. In theory, they could open 'opium dens' where you pay 200 dollars to enter, and then you can do your drugs there (all regulated and taxed and under supervision).
inglor_cz 3y ago
"Permissive extreme" with regard to alcohol would look like the Gin Craze in 18th century England. Every other house sells hard liquor, even to children. I would say that it definitely didn't work. The question is whether anything works at all with regard to addictive substances. Maybe something like Ozempic, that reduces your appetite to everything.
- eru 3y ago
  18th century England different from modern day societies in a lot of other ways, too, not just in how they treated alcohol. Eg it was a much poorer society.
rayiner 3y ago
Prohibition failed because European Americans have a deep affinity for alcohol. And it was adopted shortly after the mass immigration of Irish and Italians to the US, who had a specially deep affinity for alcohol. It wasn’t just prohibition, it was removing something that the whole country was already addicted to—an addiction that was cultivated over generations and ingrained in the culture. Prohibition can work fine with alcohol when combined with a strong social taboo. In my home country of Bangladesh, alcohol is illegal for Muslims and virtually nobody drinks it. Drugs are much more like prohibition of alcohol in Muslim countries than the prohibition of alcohol in America. We have a pre-existing taboo against drug use that we could be strengthening instead of trying to tear down. Capital punishment for drug dealers would go a long way towards reaffirming the taboo.

anon291 3y ago

Prohibition worked by basically all measures. Cirrhosis rates were down. Violence overall was actually down. Child abuse was down. 100s of thousands of people were saved due to prohibition of alcohol. I'm not even in favor of alcohol prohibition but denying it saved lives goes completely against all data.

throwup238 3y ago
What data? I'd love to see your sources for "100s of thousands of people were saved due to prohibition of alcohol." You should update the wikipedia article with those sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_Prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_Prohibition
- anon291 3y ago
  You should read actual data instead of Wikipedia https://www.nber.org/papers/w9681 https://www.nber.org/papers/w9681 <- cirrhosis declined 20 percent https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/13/1/1/183009 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/13/1/1/183009 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/16/2/433/168495 https://academic.oup.com/aler/article/16/2/433/168495 <- prohibition associated with up to 30 percent reduction in violent crime https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0144818815000587 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01448... <- another researcher with similar findings. The common cultural belief that prohibition failed is a total myth. It achieved everything it set out to achieve. People just wanted to drink. There's actually very little evidence of the supposed ills of prohibition. For example, organized crime is typically said to have been caused by prohibition, but there were other factors at play as well (immigration, economics, etc). Harder liquor being available is another one, and this is true. Cirrhosis severity increased during prohibition but the drop in cirrhosis rates more than made up for that.
  - emporas 3y ago
    Criminals due to prohibition, i.e. drinkers of alcohol, should report to the prohibitor, cirrhosis, which a very good and clear sign of alcohol consumption, indicative of their criminal behavior? A pregnant unmarried young woman of muslim religion, should report to her parents she is pregnant, indicative of sexual behavior with no one claiming legal status as her husband? That's prohibited, why should she do it? I mean, a criminal reporting their own crimes to the prohibitor, doesn't sound like a very bright move to say the least. I know personally people who drink alcohol a lot, their friends, family and social circles usually drink as well. Not always but increased probability. As soon as i meet a cousin of mine 3 times a week, and he gets busted for alcohol then i know i am next. So why should i let him report his own disease?
    - anon291 3y ago
      Cirrhosis kills, so the data is pretty 'fair', unless you're claiming there are piles of unnamed, uncertified dead people who died of cirrhosis during prohibition but were not autopsied. The data showing cirrhosis decreased is counting cirrhosis deaths as reported by hospitals getting indigent bodies. Several hospitals went from handling thousands of indigent cirrhosis deaths to handling a few hundred. You can't hide dead people easily. Where is your pile of bodies?
      - emporas 3y ago
        > You can't hide dead people easily. Yes you can. You can change their cause of death. Covid proved, this can be very easily achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people with wrong and misleading cause of death. When the doctor is intimidated because he will be fired or he will be beat up by thugs then you put in the cause of death anything you like. A doctor can be intimidated by FDA thugs who revoke licenses, or beat up street thugs with the same effect. I know personally one doctor who does autopsies. Autopsies are far from rigorous. Usually people care about a person while he is still alive, as soon as his soul flies away to some remote heaven no one cares. Especially when that person is drinking for decades, usually everyone knows what the cause was, his family, his friends, it is not rocket science. I didn't read the citations, it is many hours of study, but if any of the above is in question, i can give pretty lengthy citations about Covid and cause of death. A lot of research is pretty widely known.

55555 3y ago

Prohibition works great in Singapore.

eru 3y ago
It's still quite possible to get drugs here, but they tend to be more expensive. From a completely practical point of view, keeping poor people off drugs (and making rich people think twice) prevents most of the harm.
- rangestransform 3y ago
  I wish the west was more open to elitist policy
  - eru 3y ago
    Well, I'm just describing the practical effects of the drug policy in Singapore. It's very similar in the West: poor people get busted for doing drugs much more than rich people do. Yes, I sometimes think policies could be made more efficiently, if they were to openly acknowledge the loopholes that exist for rich enough people, and just turn them into a saner official policies, instead of 'open-secret' accidents. Singapore has a good example for gambling: foreigners can just enter our casinos, but locals have to pay something like 200 dollars to enter. Just so that you are under no illusions that you could come out ahead on net by going to the casino. In theory, they could open 'opium dens' where you pay 200 dollars to enter, and then you can do your drugs there (all regulated and taxed and under supervision).

inglor_cz 3y ago

"Permissive extreme" with regard to alcohol would look like the Gin Craze in 18th century England. Every other house sells hard liquor, even to children. I would say that it definitely didn't work. The question is whether anything works at all with regard to addictive substances. Maybe something like Ozempic, that reduces your appetite to everything.

eru 3y ago
18th century England different from modern day societies in a lot of other ways, too, not just in how they treated alcohol. Eg it was a much poorer society.

rayiner 3y ago

Prohibition failed because European Americans have a deep affinity for alcohol. And it was adopted shortly after the mass immigration of Irish and Italians to the US, who had a specially deep affinity for alcohol. It wasn’t just prohibition, it was removing something that the whole country was already addicted to—an addiction that was cultivated over generations and ingrained in the culture. Prohibition can work fine with alcohol when combined with a strong social taboo. In my home country of Bangladesh, alcohol is illegal for Muslims and virtually nobody drinks it. Drugs are much more like prohibition of alcohol in Muslim countries than the prohibition of alcohol in America. We have a pre-existing taboo against drug use that we could be strengthening instead of trying to tear down. Capital punishment for drug dealers would go a long way towards reaffirming the taboo.