Should we ban alcohol again?

I often see in gun defense threads that people facetiously suggest banning cars or knives when those are involved in killings. But that's not practical as cars and knives have very needed and useful functions. Their primary function is very beneficial to society.

However, alcohol really doesn't have any benefits. The only known major benefit of alcohol is helping fat chicks get laid. But other than that, it's uses are almost all detrimental.

It kills people, lots and lots of people. 10,000 people a year are killed in drunk driving accidents. Likely over a 100,000 people a year die from healthy related complications of alcohol. It facilitates violence, rape, and waking up next to ugly people.

Where is the outrage over this? Sure, we have some laws to try and mitigate this, but they don't work and are half assed at best. Yes, don't drink and drive - so why do we allow restaraunts that serve more than one drink or bars that serve shots? Quarter drafts, dollar shots? Isn't that creating the ideal situation for drunk driving?

We could eliminate almost all drunk driving deaths by improved restrictions and regulations. Common sense laws. I'd like CNN to do a special on this crisis with a picture of a martini glass with a skull and cross bones on it.

@plageus900 said:

This is not a thread about LSD. That's a whole different issue.

No but I wouldn't be opposed to them banning cigarettes and other tobacco products. Every time I'm around people who smoke I feel like I'm suffocating. Such a disgusting habit.

But...think of those poor women.

Why would you want to limit their selection of sausages to just the ones at the butcher?

hahahahahahahaha

Sure, look at how that turned out. Al Capone anyone?

The government makes too much money on the sale and production of alcohol for it to be banned.

That's why you have to ban guns and alcohol simultaneously.

I agree with you, OP. Useless entertainment is useless regardless of whatever freedom you want to shove on your own face. But of course, muh freedom triumphs all.

No, unless you want even more problems with organized crime than you already have.

Legalize cannabis instead.

Yes! I can become involved in trafficking bootleg Canadian whiskey across the border for outrageous profit!

Alcohol in moderation has medical benefits. You're wrong.

This country was founded on personal freedoms and responsibilities. This includes the freedom to kill yourself with alcohol. Prohibition is a childish notion pushed forward by a bunch of religious boobs, and we have already seen it's horrid price.

So is drinking, if you think about it. Drinkers slowly kill their brain and liver cells. People get intoxicated and throw up, many times on other people. Alcohol quells inhibitions and causes people to become violent, and also rape women. Then, there's also the thousands upon thousands of drunk driver accidents every year. Alcohol is very much a public health hazard, which is why public intoxication is illegal. Public smoking isn't, so if you you want tobacco banned, you should also want alcohol banned.

You're talking about over drinking to the point of vomit. Drinking in and of itself does not cause everyone to vomit. Also it doesn't enter into your lungs. He has a legitimate complaint about smokers. Let me guess.....you smoke.

I see people laughing at you for this post, but I actually think you have a sound point. Banning alcohol would definitely cut down on the drunk driving deaths, just as banning guns would cut down on the frequency of mass shootings. Unfortunately, our country is too rooted in its own stubbornness to amend its own constitution, and we have already tried prohibition once before and history has shown it doesn't work; it actually makes things worse. People are adamant not to follow new laws they feel encroach on their freedoms.

Uhhh no. Alcohol is good. Guns are bad.

Smoking in of itself does not cause lung cancer. You'd have to smoke for years for problems to arise. You can kill yourself in one night from excessive intoxication. You'd have to continuously be exposed to smokers in order to develop lung cancer. You only need to be in front of a drunk driver once to be killed by it. Again, public intoxication is illegal. Public smoking, regardless of all the literature about how damaging second hand smoke is, is not. There's a level of hypocrisy here.

By the way, I don't smoke. But you know what they say when you assume...

@sonicare: oh and that's gonna help since they can't get the guns or make them themselves just like bootlegging back in the day.

You can kill yourself falling down your stairs. Smoking does cause problems. And if a non smoker has asthma or some other condition then yes..........second hand smoke does bother them. You are not getting the sense of his post at all. He doesn't like....and I agree with him....the fact that one gets smoke forced on them. What someone else does with their health does not affect you. There is a difference between the two. Also there isn't public drinking anywhere I've been. So if you are around drinkers that's your choice. People are allowed to smoke outside. If you have to walk past them....you get a lungful. That is a MAJOR difference.

Drunk driving is illegal.....so that is addressed. Public intoxication is illegal.....so that is addressed.

The hypocrisy is yours as you can't see that smoke enters someone's lungs against their desires whereas sitting next to someone drinking does not cause alcohol to enter your body.

Didn't say smoking doesn't cause problems. Didn't say second hand smoke doesn't bother people. Where are you getting that I implied that? And boo hoo, so someone gets smoke forced on them. They can breath the fresh air in the other direction. And I'm sorry, but when someone decides to drink and then drive, and then KILL someone, that DIRECTLY impacts their health, as in, they lose ALL OF IT. I lost someone to drunk driving. I never lost anyone to second hand smoke. The fact that he is somehow bothered enough by second hand smoke to have tobacco banned, but not bothered at all to have alcohol banned when it's the cause of thousand upon thousands of drunk driving accidents every year makes him a fucking hypocrite.

I'm bowing out of this ridiculous debate because I've already crossed the line where my passion affects my rationality.

Then why are you complaining about the dude you mentioned he doesn't like second hand smoking? Doesn't he have that right?

Don't you dare! I think everything should be legal. Let people be free. Nanny states are not needed. You can even keep your guns even if I think it's ridiculous personally.

You don't need to be drunk to be violent, you dare taking or even try to take my brews away and I will shoot you, that's even before I begin to get intoxicated.

@sonicare: Are you serious? I honestly can't tell. This feels like a serious joke :P

I don't agree with banning smoking, but I really don't agree that someone "getting smoked forced on them" is not a big deal.

Also, one can drink in moderation or drink without driving whereas smoking cigarettes in public places is inevitably going to get smoke on people.

But I'm sorry about your loss and while I don't favor banning alcohol, I would favor laws making the consequences for drunk driving even harsher than they are right now.

OP thought he was being clever with some kind of "checkmate atheists!" gotcha post but directed towards people who are pro-gun control. It's Facebook-meme level stuff.

Like any drug except tabacco should be used in moderation. With that said...

Let them make fun OP. But I wholeheartedly agree with you.

@JustPlainLucas: Oh yeah drinking can certainly lead to bad and disgusting things, especially when over drinking. I'm all for responsible drinking. For me though I just find it much more difficult to avoid cigarette smoke. I can sit with friends and family, have a beer or two, and it's a very pleasant evening. However when some of them start smoking it's very difficult if not impossible to not be affected by the smoke. It stinks up my clothes, give me a headache, and if I'm around it long enough it's almost as if I smoked a few myself. Even when I'm walking down the street and a car drives by with someone smoking in it I can smell it. It just seems to be something that affects me more then I would like it too.

As great as a world without that hellish creativity-diminishing depressant would be, our culture is far too deep with it as a source for "fun" and "escaping the shitty reality that is pursuing the American Dream."

You know you don't need to use alcohol to escape.

@LJS9502_basic:No shit. Gaming is a common escape I'm sure most of us on these boards share.

Alcohol is a specific substance (depressant) that is ingested to achieve a different mental state. You may not need it to escape, but it is definitely one of the most abused substances in terms of escaping reality via substances. Xanax and opiates are the other ones that come to my mind, but this is just from my observations throughout my lifespan.

The main difference between alcohol and other substances is that you can walk to the store and easily purchase enough of it to kill yourself overnight. You can't kill yourself gaming (unless you're playing an MMORPG, hardy har har), which is a pretty big differences in distinguishing alcohol's place.

So with this in mind, where is this battle to be fought? Is it banning or restricting alcohol usage, or are a majority of the people abusing the substance in need of desperate culture shock, possibly even a near-death experience that can help push them in the right direction and reprogram their culture-fueled lust to abuse the substance? It's madness at every corner. You've a better shot at believing in reincarnation, embedding the belief that there's a parallel universe that never conjured up alcohol to begin with, and being reborn into said parallel universe.

And yet we still engage in the War on Drugs despite agreeing that Prohibition was a disaster. :-P

No. You can ban it but...

Many people would throw their rattle in a hissy fit, but yea, I wouldn't be complaining if it (along with smoking) was banned.

Personally, I do some of my best creative writing while moderately intoxicated.

Hissy fit maybe but more likely a boom in organized crime and a high death count. This could never happen in this day and age though. Everyone from every type of background would unite and burn this whole country down. Blacks and whites in full agreement, cats and dogs living together, it would be total madness!

Probably. But I enjoy my beers. And no, you can't enjoy guns. Stop it.

Yeah no shit, I'm sure there aren't a thousand famous artists who were total drunks. That comment Ryne, was the most head scratching thing I've read in a while.

Do you live in a county that allows people to smoke in establishments? Or are you saying you stand outside and feel overwhelmed?

Sure. Because everyone in the world would simultaneously give up their firearms. Legal or not.

Quoting because this is a fact.

@GreySeal9: I'm a firm believer in the Ballmer Peak, no argument there. But that only applies to specific cases. The majority of people consuming alcohol aren't doing it to "enhance" their creativity, they're doing it to make up for the lack of it, which is probably why they're drinking in the first place. It goes hand-in-hand with going out at night in America, and is practically second nature when while trying to socialize.

With you drinking leads to enhanced creativity, but what about the writer who is on his 3rd week of writer's block with bills riding his back to get this article pushed out? That man is slowly descending to insanity and alcohol is just adding fuel to the fire in his case.

Actually you guys are wrong. It does not have signficant health benefits. There are benefits to drinking a glass of red wine a day, but that's more because of the antioxidants and tannans from the grapes, not the actual alcohol. It can be used to treat acute poisoning by methanol or antifreeze, but that's a pretty unique use. And yes, rubbing alchohol has uses, but Im talking about the alcohol in mixed drinks.

@intotheminx: No, thankfully smoking in indoor establishments has been prohibited here. I live in Ontario, Canada by the way. Still though there are plenty of places where I still come in contact with cigarette smoke outdoors whether it be from strangers or friends and family. While in some instances I can reasonably avoid it however there are many times that I cannot. Even in my own apartment I sometimes get cigarette smoke entering my place.

@sonicare: It had the useful medical benefit of allowing me to watch the republican convention. I couldn't have done it otherwise and it's important to be up on world events.

That's the absolute worst. I used to live in an apartment complex and my next door neighbors smoked. It would come through the air conditioning vents. So I either had to turn off the air and roast, or be subjected to 24/7 stale cigarette odor.