Alcohol Problem

You might want to remember how absurd it is to paint someone or a whole group with a broad brush Its a great coincidence that the drink you like to take is also a drug and probably has an affect on you in even smaller amounts. Drinking two beers gives an affect (the alcohol content plays into how much of an affect)...probably not that noticeable but it does...the affect is accumulative thus two beers probably gives a bit of a calming affect and you just don't realize it, even if thats not the sole purpose of drinking it, its there all the same. Myself, if I drink two beers I am about half way to being drunk so you have probably built up a slight tolerance from frequent use of the drug, if you don't do this frequently then without doubt two beers will affect most people. Just one glass of wine (with higher alcohol content) will certainly have at least a slight affect... and isnt that what all those drunk people say on cops when caught driving drunk? Oh...I just had two beers

How YOU do alcohol is irrelevant anyway...Even if you WERE swilling booze to get drunk and not going out acting foolish...Millions of others DO swill booze and go out and commit acts of violence and kill people and themselves. I am sure there are plenty of people who can smoke a joint and never harm anyone else but that changes nothing, it is still banned. It is not about those who manage NOT to get addicted and kill themselves and others...its about the millions who DO. This might seem unfair but there are many pot smokers who feel the same way, that its unfair they cant do what they want to do, even if they arent hurting anyone and what they are doing cannot cause OD...They have to suck it up and so should you.

As to how a drug gets scheduled, there is nothing written in stone as its all up to the somewhat arbitrary decision of the DEA and they will outlaw almost any substance (save booze). But they often use the following rough guidelines:

1. Does it have a high potential for abuse? Yes...what is abuse is not outlined though
2. Does it have a high instance of dependency? Yes
3. Is it potentially deadly (toxic)? Yes, thousands die each year and thousand more are killed by drunks

Any other substance would have been banned long ago as a dangerous drug.

In fact in the UK they have set up a new classification system which classifies alcohol as a higher danger to people than marijuana. This is something we have been made aware of here as far back as the Nixon administration.

Nixon Commissioned a study of Marijuana (look up Shafer Commission if you give a crap). He was sure it would come back with the urgent advice to ban it forever as a dangerous drug. Instead the report came back saying:

"Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety,"

"Therefore, the Commission recommends ... [the] possession of marijuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration no longer be an offense."

Nixon, because he is such an honest stand up guy decided instead to suppress the report and completely criminalize it anyway...he knew better than some silly doctors and scientists...Since then, more than 13 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges. Many peoples lives have been ruined for smoking something that is harder to OD on than WATER.

But my reasons for this thread is not to promote the legalization of Marijuana. It is to point out the complete inconsistency and the lack of any standards for what does and doesn't get banned...its rather arbitrary and in the hands of people whose whole livelihood depends on having people to bust.

My reasons for posting this thread is to show that almost ALL intoxicants are banned in the US regardless of whether its dangerous or not. Yet one (two if you count tobacco) shining example remains legal, and it is a drug that is CLEARLY harmful and potentially DEADLY.

One can debate Tabasco being legal as well. One can say it doesn't get you high but like your two beers or your glass of wine, tobacco indeed DOES have an affect on the user, its just not near as profound, it acts as a calmative....not to mention its deadly, causes cancer, highly addictive, and legal.

So whether Marijuana (0 deaths every year from ingestion) should be legal or not is not the purpose of this thread...the purpose is to show that there is a huge inconsistency and that alcohol, a dangerous drug that causes significant societal problems all over the country everyday...It remains legal contrary to the stated mission of the DEA and our drug policy which states its mission is to ban such dangerous substances for our own good.

If people clearly see this...then there is no need for debate...just a need to take action and ban alcohol for public safety or re-examine our drug laws.

 

Oregon tried to legalize it, it passed and made it to the govs desk but he didnt sign it stating that he was threatened by the federal government that if marijuana became legal then the government would suspend any federal money. They were planning to legalize it and sell it in liquor stores...California is, right now, looking to legalize it as well. The DEA has said, and has followed through on threats NOT to respect local laws regarding the legalization of pot...they constantly bust places selling it contrary to local laws that say they are allowed to.

 

Tom, you could take away the alcohol and most people still wouldn't think. If the media doesn't say it then it can't be true. If there isn't an official press conference at the White house over it, it can't be true.

Seriously. We have to make sure election ballots are as simple as possible so people don't get 'confused'. lol People are so stupid and so enamored with our F'ing two party system that they won't write in for a real, qualified candidate that actually cares about them and the country. They can't even think for themselves for their own good!! That's too hard!!!
Like zombies they vote for the one with the best and the most political adds on their tvs.

Back on topic. If they brought back prohibition it would be absolutely impossible to enforce so why even bother? And it would be much worse than the 30's today.

Even if they quadrupled police forces (only possibly by more deficit spending of course), where will they imprison everyone and how will that be paid for?

California and Illinois have been RELEASING prisoners early by the thousands to try to help their hopeless budget situations. I've heard they've even stretched the requirements of non-violent offenders so more of them would be eligible. Times are desperate.

The government can't solve all your problems. I know some people think they can but they just can't. We need less laws, not more. If we have to ban alcohol, then we need to ban cigarettes, ban high pollution cars, ban guns, ban steak knives, maybe even butter knives because theoretically you could slip and fall on one. Ban electricity because some people get electrocuted every year. Ban stairs. Limit dwellings to one floor because some people fall down them and get killed every year.
It's a novel idea and I can kind of see your point but we need to push government back out of our lives. Not invite them to control more of it.

They are more sleazy, slimy and more untrustworthy today than at any point in U.S. history. Voted in by the absolute brain dead. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are.......GOOD?? Chuck Schumer.....GOOD??? Obama?? The best, brightest and most trustworthy?? It boggles the mind how these arrogant elitists ever got near a public office let alone hold one!! The American public is simply that uninformed. They are that gullable and lazy.

 

Taking a drink isn't the problem, abusing alcohol is the problem and there are laws against it...how far do you want to go with this? Everything is dangerous if mishandled or abused but you can't go crazy with your Big Brother Government-regulating dreams. A gun is dangerous if misused, a car is dangerous if misused, heck a ball bat is dangerous if misused. You aren't necessarily wanting to regulate the product, you are wanting to regulate stupidity.
Remember, just because you simply don't agree with something the whole world isn't going to bow down to your wishes.

 

There are no laws against abusing alcohol...you can sit in your house and drink yourself into a stupor every night of your life and as long as you don't go out and drive or beat your wife. The most they do is advise you to drink responsibly. Is this abuse? What do you call abuse? Is getting drunk every night abuse? There is no law against it. That's another problem with the current scheduling of drugs is they look to see if the drug has a potential for abuse (without doubt alcohol under any definition is commonly abused)...yet they don't define what abuse is.

I can see your point that alcohol is only dangerous if abused...and of course this holds true with most everything..a person can even drink small amounts of poison (which is what alcohol is in reality) and not kill yourself if you take a small enough dose. Poison is legal...pot isnt. This holds true with many of the drugs that the government HAS banned. But that didn't stop them from banning them anyway and spending billions each year arresting and imprisoning people for the mere possession and use let alone making, growing and selling the stuff. I believe people are being willfully ignorant here. Why is it okay to ban all these other substances and spend huge amounts of tax money to support a vast network of drug enforcement for these other drugs and not for one that has such an obvious negative affect on our society and fits all the criteria to be scheduled as one of the most dangerous drugs? With all these other substances we say you just cant take them or we will arrest you and take all your possessions and label you as a criminal, we don't trust anyone to do them responsibly (even though many are less addictive and harmful than booze) but with booze we just warn them of the dangers and let it go at that. Isnt this a glaring double standard?

Tell me though...why is it that we do not worry about the billions we pay the DEA each year to enforce bans on other drugs like marijuana (again, a drug you cannot even OD on), why do we expend our money time and energy running down people whose main crime is to grow, sell and take a drug that is far less harmful than booze? Why do people not lament the governments heavy hand here? Why is it okay to fill prisons with people who take other drugs but its not worth the time, effort, and money to bust people who swill booze? We lament that we cant take on the enforcement of an alcohol ban yet it seems to me all they need do is the same as they do now, bust people who break the law....If you are a person who doesnt break the law, you wont drink...if you drink, you are a criminal.

Right now its apparent to me that drinkers are just drug users who are doing a legal drug. Bars are dealers, alcohol companies make and distribute this highly intoxicating drug, they are drug manufacturers. Ban it and those people will have to stop, if they dont they are breaking a law, if they break the law they go to jail...just like any other drug. If a person is a good law abiding citizen they will stop drinking and they wont have to worry about going to jail. Just like anyone who did marijuana when it was banned...they stopped doing it or they were criminals, plain and simple...people didnt seems to have a big problem with that and certainly see people who smoke pot as criminals. Why the double standard? Because you LIKE booze but dont care about pot users? It seems to me that people are okay with ruining the lives of people who chose to take other drugs and giving the government the power to ruin them simply because they choose not to do them and there are less of them thus its easier....So we should just take the same drug that the majority takes and we will be fine.

Has the many many billions we have spent on the existing drug war eliminated the use of drugs? Or has it done the same thing the ban of alcohol did? Simply put these substances in the realm of crime and create huge drug cartels? Why is it not worth enforcing a ban on a substance that kills so many in this country but its worth spending billions to bust people (and destroy their lives) for smoking a plant that couldn't kill you by ingesting it, even if you smoked it 24/7?

I can see your points as I don't like having government telling ME what I can an cant do when I am not doing anything wrong...but they do and most seem okay with it as long as it doesn't affect them and what they like to do. It seems that so many people who rail against heavy handed government being mommy and daddy, telling us what we can and cant do have little problem with it until someone says they shouldn't do something THEY do or like or think isn't wrong. David seems to think he isn't doing anything wrong when he drinks booze but seems to think that a person who smokes pot IS wrong. Even when the drug HE is taking often kills the user while marijuana has never killed anyone. the drug HE uses has a high rate of addiction and dependency and is potentially deadly... The law says he can do this drug but the law says a person who does something like marijuana, a far less dangerous substance and one that creates far less societal problems...will go to jail, be branded a criminal and possibly have his life essential ruined for it....its just seems ironic and doesn't seem to be based in any logic.

My theory is that alcohol remains legal because we in America love to drink booze and we don't care if its dangerous and kills 100,000 people each year. All the people who think drug users should go to jail love to get high on booze and if the government bans it, they wont stop drinking and they will become criminals. They are law abiding as long as the law doesnt stop them from doing the drug THEY want to do...then they are patriots breaking an unfair law. Drinkers - Patriots breaking an unfair law / Pot Smokers - Dirty filthy law breaking criminals who desreve what they get.

By banning booze it will make all the wrong people criminals. But we don't care if people who use other intoxicants lives are destroyed because its not the intoxicant the majority of drug users in America want to take. Those poor suckers who get busted for selling pot don't have billions of dollars of legal drug money (David and all the other boozers beer and wine money) to lobby with and pressure the powers that be. The politician, the businessman, all the way down to the cop who likes to throw back a few beers after work now cant get high and that's not acceptable. You can get high in america...but you have to do it with booze only, anyhting else and you are a lowlife criminal.

The double standard is glaringly obvious.

 

Early Americans

They drank volumes of beer. The water was tainted from a lack of proper sewerage diposal in townships.
Man has been a user of drugs way before the new world.
To day caffine, nicotine and alcohol are legal. Some hard drugs destroy the body and the mind. High grade heroine can be taken for near a lifetime if you have the resources. Little if any damage to the body occurs, but addiction is inevitable and quick.
Drugs do help the group of chronic pain patients that would die from a pain overload. One drug that was made to help heroine addicts ( Methadone ) has had a lot of research in trying to find a cure for addiction. In patients with spinal injurys that are permanent methadone has been
a major help for that group of people.
All drugs, bar none have side effects. For each individual this is for drugs in general not just narcotics. Any drug can cause any side effect !

 

There's your difference- Alcohol is legal. Unless it is abused it will not harm the drinker or those around him.
If you sit down & fire up a joint you are going for the mind altering affect, plain & simple. When your mind is altered you pose a potential threat to yourself and those around you.
Believe/admit it or not, there are many people who like the taste of beer or wine and drink it for that reason alone. Maybe you aren't capable of that or don't believe it but I can assure you it is in fact true. You can call me a "boozer" if it makes you feel better but I'm sure there are many folks out there just like me who enjoy a cold beer after mowing grass or playing ball. Or a glass of nice wine with their evening meal. We aren't looking for any type of "calming effect" like you referred to earlier...just a cold beer to quench a thirst. No more, no less.
And by the way, I looked in the fridge. I have 1 Coors Light. It was left over from a 12-pack I bought probably 3 weeks ago. Does that sound like "boozing" to you? Should my rights to buy & consume alcohol be dictated based on this rate on consumption?

 

If you drink booze you are a boozer, if you smoke weed, a stoner...its just label So to do marijuana is wrong simply because at the turn of the 20th century someone decided to ban it without ever even studying it to see if it were dangerous or not? Well, lets unban it and problem solved!!

So we are in agreement that alcohol is indeed a drug...A beer or a glass of wine is the way that drug is delivered. It is simply legal while others aren't. And you are taking in small amounts of that drug when you drink. At one brief time it wasn't legal and you would have been a criminal for sitting down after mowing the lawn to drink a refreshing beer that, even though it is delivering drugs into your system, you get no effect from, even just a little. If it were banned tomorrow would you still drink here and there? or would you stop drinking any alcohol immediately in accordance with the law? If others decided they would continue to drink and whine that its so unfair...would you see these people as criminals?

I don't understand how the fact that marijuana is smoked to get what is usually are rather mild high (of course there are different flavors, types and strengths) makes it somehow more wrong? I couldn't quote figures but I am certain that there are huge numbers of drinkers who drink mainly for the affect...many don't even like the taste and have to cover it up with fruity flavors to make it more palatable. Is that wrong? Are you abusing alcohol if you get a buzz from it?

The thing is, you have the option to drink for whatever reason and however you want. Simply because YOU choose to drink just a little and avoid the stronger affects that certainly come from taking this drug, doesn't mean you or anyone else must do it this way...and there is no doubt that there are legions of people who indeed want that affect. You have the option to literally drink yourself to death if you like and thousands do.

Should your right to take this drug be limited because you claim to drink responsibly? Probably not but that's not how it works in our system with other potentially dangerous drugs like this one. Just because there is a certain portion of a population that CAN consume a drug responsibly, they are banned all the same because of the legions of users who cant...

Alcohol is a potentially dangerous drug that can kill you, it fits all the criteria for a drug that would otherwise be scheduled at the most restrictive levels...so yes, if we are to be consistent with current drug policy...you should not be allowed to take that drug regardless of how you do it. If you continue to take it, even just a small amount, you should be branded a criminal and put in jail.

 

Oh...and if drinking for the affect is wrong then we can discuss hard alcohol like vodka, rum, everclear, whisky, etc...just small amounts of these will have an affect and most (many) people mix these with other things to mask the taste...they drink mixed drinks. If they are not mixed and taken in shots then there will almost certainly be an affect. I assume THESE harder mixtures would best be banned since certainly most if not all who drink them are drinking them for the affect. You don't mix alcohol into a flavored drink because you LIKE the taste of the alcohol...you do it to mask the taste...and even small amounts have an affect...I would say the lions share of these people are drinking just for affect...assuming taking a drug just for the affect is wrong in your mind and drinking simply because you like the taste is okay.

I'll tell you what though...If I drink just one beer I get the affect but then again, I...like you...do not drink much at all (a few times a year). This makes me wonder why you get NO affect AT ALL from a can of beer as you say you don't drink much either....one or two beers gives me a buzz. The most bewildering statement you made though...is that you drink beer because you like the taste but you drink Coors Light...that doesn't make a sense at all

 

Drusus,

I am confused. Are you of the opinion that all of the drugs should be illegal? It sounds like you think that alcohol should be illegal and marijuana should be legal. How is that hypocrisy any better than what we have now?

Furthermore, you cant ban everything that is dangerous. Driving a car is probably more dangerous than doing either of the two drugs mentioned and that includes if you back out the accidents caused by those drugs.

Also, I like to drink vodka martini's after work. I like the taste but drink for the effect. I find nothing morally wrong with my actions. I don't drink and drive and while my health may suffer, yours wont due to my actions. I would love to continue this post buy my workday is over and it is time to claim my seat at the poker table and have several martinis.

Cheers!

 

Drink of choice single malt whiskey and anyone who adds ice, soda, or anything else should be criminalized for doing so
why do I drink it, well I like the taste I like the affect (Very warming) and yes even in moderation it has a affect, there are many studies that show your reaction times slow even with one drink. Should pot be legalised hell yes, demystify it and collect the tax revenue

 

I can't speak for anyone else, all I am saying is that I enjoy an occasional beer and therefore you don't have the right to restrict my right to have one. Do you disagree with that statement?

 

If you ban it, people will continue to find a way to get alcohol. If our country didn't glorify alcohol the way it does maybe there wouldn't be such a problem in the first place!

 

We use the poppy fields in Afghanistan as an excuse to go after them. We use marijuana to go after the American people. The pharmaceutical companies....no problem, so long as you pay the Feds their cut and the big boys can stuff their pockets.....Sopranos style. So long as fat cats and corrupt government can keep fleecing the folks who use alcohol., hell, they might start sending you coupons for it. Dip into their pockets though, and watch the moral outcry against evil alcohol from the criminals.

 

Would you still have an occasional one if it did become illegal?

 

The problem with that is I am sure there are people who enjoy an occasional doobie. Or a snort of coke or a shot of heroin. Or maybe even a bit of meth like Andre Agassi.

 

Is there anything in the world that is not a conspiracy controlled by the US government?

 

You two dont listen do you

 

No

 

Dont be so sure. He seems rather sly. Too sly for an average person.