FlexGunship said:
The prevalence of alcohol use is due to the pervasive desire to alter one's cognitive experience (in some fashion). If Alcohol were illegal, not all alcohol users would return to alcohol; instead, most would simply identify the most readily accessible drug and use that.
If it's not alcohol, it'll be marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or meth.
jarednjames said:
What is the percentage of 'successful' drug users who you could say the drugs didn't ruin their lives, to drug users who have cleary had their lives ruined by drugs?
I have no doubt some people can live normal lives and still utilise the drugs, but unless there is a significant number (if not a high majority) that are like this then I don't think it makes a difference.
An extremely large number of people drink alcohol, but the number of people within this group whose lives are ruined by it is nowhere near that large. However, if you take heroin for example, how many people take it and how many people's lives are subsequently ruined? (The above paragraph refers mainly to regular useage).
I don't have numbers and would like to see some, but I think this may be one of the major points when it comes to drugs and why they are banned.
Both of these posts make some good points.
1) Is there a static market for intoxication (by some means or other) that's unaffected by drug laws? If there is, then making a drug such as marijuana illegal has no real effect. It's just directing consumers towards some specific drug.
The fact that there is still a market for marijuana, cocaine, etc shows that at least a small portion of the population is so picky about their means of intoxication that they'd choose an illegal drug over a legal drug...
... or it shows that a portion of the intoxication market doesn't care about laws. I think the latter is the case. The people using illegal drugs are more likely to abuse whatever drug they take, regardless of whether it's alcohol or some other drug. Their choice of an illegal drug shows they aren't nearly as concerned about the consequences of their actions as they are about intoxication.
That means a study would be flawed. Is it the drugs that are more likely to ruin a person's life or are people more likely to ruin their lives also more likely to choose illegal drugs.
Legalizing marijuana would bring in some extra tax revenue, but not some overwhelming tide of new tax revenue that would transform government budgets. At some point, a rise in marijuana usage would merely cut into alcohol usage.
2) There is no static intoxication market. Laws making all drugs, including alcohol, illegal would reduce intoxication among the populace. Likewise, legalizing marijuana or other drugs would increase intoxication among the populace.
I think the second model is more realistic. To cut alcohol consumption to 30%, or even 60% of previous levels (or whatever the actual reduction was during prohibition since making alcohol illegal had the side effect of making consumption very difficult to measure) means you're cutting the number of customers even more drastically. Cutting out the 30% of users that use alcohol infrequently doesn't cut alcohol consumption by 30%. Very frequent users consume more alcohol per person than infrequent users.
Cutting out a huge chunk of non-problem drinkers, the drinkers most likely to be influenced by an alcohol prohibition, would mean a higher percentage of those who still consumed alcohol would have their lives ruined by it.
Short term, cutting alcohol consumption by even drastic levels doesn't eliminate the problems caused by alcohol. Instead alcohol use just becomes limited to those most likely to ruin their lives and cause problems to the rest of society.
3) Regardless of short term effects, what effect does a multi-generational prohibition on alcohol (and all other drugs) have? If people were not inundated with beer commercials brainwashing them to see intoxication as the means to becoming the most popular person at the party, how prevalent would alcohol abuse be? In other words, why did it take a decade for alcohol consumption to rise back to previous levels once prohibition was repealed?
This is something that would cut across all lines, especially if the tendency to drink uncontrollably is chemically related - i.e. some people's chemical interaction makes it impossible to control their drinking once they've started. In other words, not just the people that use alcohol every day, but the binge drinker that may not drink often, but drinks badly almost every time they do drink.
There are many people that are competent socially, in that they do follow laws, pursue good careers, etc, but physically can't handle alcohol and wouldn't have become problem users if not exposed to it in the first place (and most absolutely refuse to admit they can't control their use through willpower since they're successful at most of the other things they do).
In this case, prohibition would actually reduce alcohol abuse and the cost to society of alcohol abuse, but not eliminate it. It doesn't eliminate abuse of illegal drugs even with a legal alternative available, so it would be naive to expect prohibition to eliminate alcohol abuse. That would create a scenario where one would have to evaluate whether the reduction was significant enough to make it worth it - something that would be hard to do in advance.
4) Or is alcohol a drug that would be better treated the same way society treats tobacco use? Put severe restrictions on advertising (no more TV beer commercials, for example), put severe restrictions on where it can be used, sue alcohol manufacturers for huge sums of money that theoretically go to the state to reduce alcohol abuse, etc, and hope it eventually has a long term effect on alcohol abuse.
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