5 ms·

Alcohol is not in fact safe for sale over the counter. Say what?

wpietri 12y ago
"Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years." from http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm "5,000 people under age 21 die each year from alcohol-related car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning, and other injuries such as falls, burns, and drowning. [...] More than 190,000 people under age 21 visited an emergency room for alcohol-related injuries in 2008 alone." from http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/special-populations-co-occurring-disorders/underage-drinking http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/special-populations-... If somebody invented it today, it would be thoroughly illegal. My point here is that teddyh's conflation of "legal to buy without a prescription" and "safe" is incorrect.
- teddyh 12y ago
  > If somebody invented it today, it would be thoroughly illegal. My point here is that teddyh's conflation of "legal to buy without a prescription" and "safe" is incorrect. Fine, so exclude alcohol for being a special case as it was grandfathered in. I’ll readily grant this, since reclassifying something from safe to non-safe is generally risk-free. How does this affect the issue at hand, which was about Modafinil, Provigil and the like? If you think that alcohol is a special case, treat it as such; either it is an exception since it was grandfathered in, in which case it shouldn’t fall under the categories which you should consider safe merely because they are non-prescription, or it really is safe, in which case my argument is still valid. You can’t have it both ways, and it is really an irrelevant outlier example. What matters is not how I categorize it, but how you categorize it, and however you do, the argument works.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    As I mention in my profile, anonymous argumentative people get less leeway. And you in particular seem to be looking for things to argue with, not trying to understand my point. So this is the last reply unless yours make a substantial jump in quality. I am saying that what you claim as a clear bright line is in fact a wide blurry line that zigzags all over the place. The majority of Americans screw with their metabolisms and brain chemistry every day without the involvement of a doctor. And they do it based on nothing more than, "Well, that seems ok." That Modafinil currently requires a prescription while caffeine and alcohol don't is mainly historical accident. That tells us very little about their relative safety. So again, your conflation of "legal" with 'safe" so you can call people insane doesn't really work.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      I’ll summarize my arguments for clarity: There are obviously some things which affect metabolisms and brain chemistry which are either perfectly harmless or things that should obviously be permitted without supervision, e.g. exercise. Likewise, there are many, many things which nobody should ever mess with without serious medical consultation and possibly exploration of all other alternative options. The question is, how does one draw the line between them? The government/state/doctors (one’s local FDA equivalent) purports to do this, and they have a lot in their favor, with large budgets, scientific studies and general trustworthiness. They are, however, hampered by tradition (e.g. grandfather clauses) and politics (e.g. drug war). This makes them obviously imperfect. The second, fallback, alternative, which people have relied on for as long as people have existed, is the grapevine. Hearsay, rumors, anecdotes, fads, trends, that sort of thing. These also have obvious problems, which I trust I don’t need to enumerate further. My first argument is this: However imperfect the first option is, it is obviously better than the second option. I also suggested a third option, namely to select another large institution with the same advantages as the first option, but perhaps with less of the disadvantages. One could even mix and match, and, for instance, follow the FDA’s recommendations for all things except for weed, where one might choose to follow the equivalent authority in Portugal or maybe the Netherlands. My second argument is that with this third option, simply choosing the fallback second option is, indeed, of questionable sanity and prone to self-selection, cherry-picking and other kinds of experimental failure, all of which leads to bad science and extremely questionable and unreliable results. The first option is the simple one, and is obviously acceptable. The third option is reasonable. The second one is indefensible given the availability of the other two. The ease by which people fall to the second option when the first (large, traditional and authoritative) one fails them reminds me of this passage from Father Brown in The Oracle of the Dog (G. K. Chesterton, 1926): ‘ […] It’s part of something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that’s arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.’ He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown, and went on talking almost as if he were alone. ‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: “He was made Man.”’

"Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years." from http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm "5,000 people under age 21 die each year from alcohol-related car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning, and other injuries such as falls, burns, and drowning. [...] More than 190,000 people under age 21 visited an emergency room for alcohol-related injuries in 2008 alone." from http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/special-populations-co-occurring-disorders/underage-drinking http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/special-populations-... If somebody invented it today, it would be thoroughly illegal. My point here is that teddyh's conflation of "legal to buy without a prescription" and "safe" is incorrect.

teddyh 12y ago
> If somebody invented it today, it would be thoroughly illegal. My point here is that teddyh's conflation of "legal to buy without a prescription" and "safe" is incorrect. Fine, so exclude alcohol for being a special case as it was grandfathered in. I’ll readily grant this, since reclassifying something from safe to non-safe is generally risk-free. How does this affect the issue at hand, which was about Modafinil, Provigil and the like? If you think that alcohol is a special case, treat it as such; either it is an exception since it was grandfathered in, in which case it shouldn’t fall under the categories which you should consider safe merely because they are non-prescription, or it really is safe, in which case my argument is still valid. You can’t have it both ways, and it is really an irrelevant outlier example. What matters is not how I categorize it, but how you categorize it, and however you do, the argument works.
- wpietri 12y ago
  As I mention in my profile, anonymous argumentative people get less leeway. And you in particular seem to be looking for things to argue with, not trying to understand my point. So this is the last reply unless yours make a substantial jump in quality. I am saying that what you claim as a clear bright line is in fact a wide blurry line that zigzags all over the place. The majority of Americans screw with their metabolisms and brain chemistry every day without the involvement of a doctor. And they do it based on nothing more than, "Well, that seems ok." That Modafinil currently requires a prescription while caffeine and alcohol don't is mainly historical accident. That tells us very little about their relative safety. So again, your conflation of "legal" with 'safe" so you can call people insane doesn't really work.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    I’ll summarize my arguments for clarity: There are obviously some things which affect metabolisms and brain chemistry which are either perfectly harmless or things that should obviously be permitted without supervision, e.g. exercise. Likewise, there are many, many things which nobody should ever mess with without serious medical consultation and possibly exploration of all other alternative options. The question is, how does one draw the line between them? The government/state/doctors (one’s local FDA equivalent) purports to do this, and they have a lot in their favor, with large budgets, scientific studies and general trustworthiness. They are, however, hampered by tradition (e.g. grandfather clauses) and politics (e.g. drug war). This makes them obviously imperfect. The second, fallback, alternative, which people have relied on for as long as people have existed, is the grapevine. Hearsay, rumors, anecdotes, fads, trends, that sort of thing. These also have obvious problems, which I trust I don’t need to enumerate further. My first argument is this: However imperfect the first option is, it is obviously better than the second option. I also suggested a third option, namely to select another large institution with the same advantages as the first option, but perhaps with less of the disadvantages. One could even mix and match, and, for instance, follow the FDA’s recommendations for all things except for weed, where one might choose to follow the equivalent authority in Portugal or maybe the Netherlands. My second argument is that with this third option, simply choosing the fallback second option is, indeed, of questionable sanity and prone to self-selection, cherry-picking and other kinds of experimental failure, all of which leads to bad science and extremely questionable and unreliable results. The first option is the simple one, and is obviously acceptable. The third option is reasonable. The second one is indefensible given the availability of the other two. The ease by which people fall to the second option when the first (large, traditional and authoritative) one fails them reminds me of this passage from Father Brown in The Oracle of the Dog (G. K. Chesterton, 1926): ‘ […] It’s part of something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that’s arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.’ He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown, and went on talking almost as if he were alone. ‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: “He was made Man.”’