More Discussion On the Secular god That Alcohol Has Been Made Into

Kerlyssa Camera Obscura • 16 hours ago

So the only acceptable forms of behavior are ones which are completely risk free? Those don't exist. The US has tried to enforce complete alcohol abstinence before, it did not improve health and happiness of the population. It tries to enforce complete abstinence of many recreational drugs now, too, and that is not decreasing health and harm risks. Watching someone die of a lifestyle related illness is not the endall for commentary on said lifestyle. People almost never die 'well', and always die of SOMETHING.

Camera Obscura Kerlyssa • 16 hours ago

 What is it with you guys who figure that there is nothing between total and enthusiastic promotion of something and making it a felony?

 I'm surprised you found the mention of my brother's death in so far as you obviously missed that my comments didn't "endall" with that, they included far more than that, including information from the CDC and many other issues.

That said, I've watched people kill themselves with alcohol, I've seen a car accident in front of my house in which drunk driving was a factor.... Those things are not irrelevant in a discussion of the effects of alcohol, they don't represent phenomena that aren't massively documented. That's what is known as reality.

 I have to say that this issue in the wake of the condemnation on the blogs of the criminal pollution of the water in Flint has led me to conclude that some people are OK with some risks from the ingestion of some poisons but not others. Look it up, the health consequences from ingesting lead and alcohol are remarkably similar, especially for those who were exposed before birth.

Kerlyssa Camera Obscura • 4 hours ago

 ...people choose to drink. They don't choose to have lead in supposedly safe drinking water. Apples and oranges.

If not illegalization, then what?
     
       
 Camera Obscura Kerlyssa • a minute ago

 "If not illegalization, then what?"

Good heavens, everything from simply informing people that drinking risks harming yourself or if you're pregnant then the child who will be born to an attempt to diminish the advertising and product placement promotion of drinking and getting drunk to making it more expensive to drink - a stiff tax dedicated to the treatment of those harmed by alcohol and anti-drinking education and stricter regulation of alcohol.

The idea that because something is harmful means you have to have full blown prohibition and making it illegal or that you have to endorse it with all your will is silly, it is childish and it prevents more practical courses of action which will more likely succeed from being considered or tried. It is TV program thinking, not realism.

 In thinking about this I have to wonder why the people who are upset by the CDC recommendation don't seem to get that most women choose to have children at some time in their life and that they almost always care about the welfare of children they have. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a real thing, alcohol has a damaging effect on fetal health and development just as taking certain other drugs does. Alcohol is hardly the only drug that the CDC and other health agencies advise women who may or intend to become pregnant to avoid.  In terms of effects on developing fetuses, not to mention the women who consume them, alcohol and lead are remarkably similar in their effects, they are not "apples and oranges" in anything but the intentionality of their ingestion.  I can assure you, that makes no biological difference to the outcome.

We've developed some really bizarre ideas about alcohol. One of the lessons I got from one of my brother's mocking refusal to try AA, that he didn't recognize a "higher power", is that he had, in fact, adopted a higher power in his life, alcohol, and it totally consumed him and caused enormous damage to a large number of people.