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We can't. Remember when they banned it? Al Capone and gangsters made money big-time.

Like Sal said, not everyone abuses the privilege therefore it is not fair to take the rights away of law abiding citizens just because some people do not honor the law. It's the same with guns, we should not ban guns simply because criminals use them. What we need to do is make sure that people who do drink do so in a way that does not harm other citizens (such as drinking and driving) and those who do need to pay tough consequences for doing so.

Alcohol should not be banned. It is up to a person what he does with the alcohol. Men and women need to be responsible for what he does with an item — let it be alcohol, cigarettes, knife, and the like.

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Even if they did, it wouldn't go away. Speakeasies, anyone? Did we learn anything from the Prohibition?

No. Selling of alcohol harms no one.

True..what you all are saying is very true…it will be used anyway but undercover. And yes, just because some people abuse it doesn't mean everyone should have to suffer…but think about this. How many times have you turned on the news and saw that some one or some one's child was killed by a drunk driver? Not all drunk drivers are identified by the police once they get in their car. And what if it was you or your family member that got killed cause some one made it their choice to get drunk and then drive home?And another thing…what is the purpose for alcohol anyway? Its not like banning it will be a health issue cause last time I checked alcohol wasn't exactly healthy. You want people to continue selling it but when you really think about it… what for? Does it make you have more fun? If thats the case then thats a personal problem cause you're a really boring person without it. Does it make you feel better? Thats a flaw in your character because you need a substance like that to satisfy you. There is no valid reason why we need alcohol in our lives. It does no good and serves no purpose.

This really is a stupid question.

true

Selling of alcohol harms everyone!! I still think it should be allowed, but only because it would only get worse if it was banned.

How does an individual person's consumption of alcohol harm other people by default?

There are irresponsible and aggressive actions which can happen under conditions of addiction or intoxication (DUIs, assaults, domestic abuse), but these actions would tend to be illegal or demand the state's punitive responses regardless of whether alcohol was involved or not.

I agree with the second part, that's part of the logic behind removing other drug prohibitions as well, but I'm kind of curious how the first belief was arrived at. It would seem to me that most people can consume alcohol or certainly purchase it without any harm coming to anyone and the "harm" comes from a small minority of irresponsible users of a mind-altering substance or addicts (alcoholics).

I admit that the few people who do not drink alcohol and have not been harmed by an alcoholic are not hurt, but drinking alcohol, even if you don't abuse it, can still harm you. It can still impair your judgment, it still kills brain cells, it still can get you drunk. So yes, I exaggerated a bit, but only because I absolutely cannot stand alcohol, and I hope that I myself am never interested.

If you are never interested fine, that's good for you (more or less).

But unless you are dealing with an abusive family member or alcoholism (or a car accident/assault), there's not a situation where you are directly harmed by alcohol use. It has social costs as with any mind-altering substance, but the vast majority of these external costs are caused by a handful of alcohol users. The vast majority of alcohol transaction costs are completely internal and harmless to you or anyone else.

As for alcohol's health effects to the individual, it does indeed cause impaired judgment and can cause temporary, but not permanent, brain damage (if you consume it to excess or with great consistency as with a binge or the condition of alcoholism which tends to have a strong genetic component). You will tend to do more damage to your liver than your brain actually with consistent large scale use anyway. Meanwhile… most people are fully capable of moderating their use to the point that alcohol consumption (particularly with wine) can be a net benefit health wise (blood pressure is improved for example). In fact, my understanding of the science of alcohol is that moderate consumption is even associated with improved cognition into old age.

Responsible social use tends to avoid most of the pitfalls that you are/were describing as though they are universal problems. Most people don't get "drunk" off one or two drinks, and while their judgment can be "impaired" at that stage, it's hardly likely that these will be people will run off and do utterly silly things like have sex with strangers or some such without a lot more alcohol consumption (or a pre-existing desire to do utterly silly things like that even without alcoholic social lubrication).

If you don't want to use it, and don't like it, this is all well and good for you, but whether or not you get to impose this disdain and disgust upon others should illuminate a great many political issues for you. In general, we are much better off not legislating based on our own personal disgust. I for example cannot stand eating onions or pickles. But I don't go around demanding that others share my dislike, indeed to impose it through legal bans that they must share it by law. In fact, I know full well that many people find these disgusting vegetables appealing. The same is true with alcohol. Many people find it appealing even if you find it disgusting. It should be up to them whether or not the damages to themselves are worth the benefits and enjoyment they attain. (The same argument applies to currently banned narcotics).

A modest "sin tax", somewhat higher than at present in most states, to make the price of alcohol for abusive use less economically sustainable and to offset some of the social/external costs of alcohol abuse seems reasonable, but a ban does not. Both for the reason you described (that it makes the situation worse, much worse) and because for most consumers, there is no reason for a ban. People who don't want alcohol are not forced to buy it, and those who enjoy it should be free to do so responsibly.

(Full disclosure, I don't drink very much, if at all, and I find most forms of alcohol, particularly beer, to be disgusting myself. But I don't see how my disdain should be universally valid)

I see your point, but if there was a way to ban alcohol without doing more harm than good, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Alcohol has ruined people's relationships, families, jobs, and lives. People under the influence have been hurt in so many ways, even killing themselves and others. I don't think that comparing alcohol to onions and pickles is quite fair. I agree with you when you say we should not impose our opinions on others- but only if the opinion is harmless. If I was able to convince others not to drink alcohol at all, I would certainly impose my beliefs on them, because you never know what might happen.

Every life is important. And the number of alcohol-related deaths is much too high. 85,000 people died alcohol-related deaths in 2009. To me, anything above 0 is too high, and so you can see why I am so against alcohol. Is not imposing beliefs worth 85,000 deaths a year? I don't think so.

And so I have to say that, if 'legislating based on my personal disgust' could save 85,000 lives, or even just 1, I would not hesitate to do so.

I'm not sure that "saving lives" is a compelling reason by itself, certainly not saving ALL lives through legislative meddling does not make sense to me. Simply because citizens do not have the good sense to obey our disdain and refrain from consumption. In this grand thought experiment where a ban does not result in a violent black market of goods, where people do not consume less safe products to achieve the same desired end result (mind-altered states), and where the public has limitless resources to apply to this noble gesture of protecting the citizenry from itself, perhaps you have a point. That experiment does not at all resemble reality. We have limited, very limited, powers and resources to apply to public ends. Some worthy, some not. 85k deaths may seem like a lot. But many of those are not preventable demises, and most of them have nothing or very little to do with standard consumers and their uses for recreational alcohol. You are describing a world populated by only alcoholics and drunk drivers or drunken bar fights when you describe the effects of alcohol. This is extremely unreasonable.

And as I addressed above, there are dozens, possibly hundreds of issues on which your disdain and disgust may or may not save lives if it were shared… but since it is not, I fail to see where legislative battles are appropriate. On any of these. You are still failing to understand that MOST people who consume alcohol do so without any meaningful damage or loss of life (that is why I compare it to onions or pickles, because the vast majority of the time, it has no significant harm, even to the user themselves, much less to others around them). In fact some people may even be benefiting, not merely socially but in health considerations and quality of life. These are trade-offs that most consumers do not feel are easily sacrificed simply because some consumers are irresponsible or addictive users of a product.

Nor should they.

There might be some middle position, possibly requiring government meddling, or more likely not so much, that saves some lives, or otherwise improves public safety and reduces harms caused by substance abuse. I'm not opposed to those forms of programs. But by and large the problem isn't the alcohol (or other substances), it's the people. Target resources and energy there rather than toward the substances.

PS. I'm not going to hold that we should legislate to protect the few from themselves as a valid philosophy, simply because it does not work in the real world (before even getting to whether this is a desirable moral end, which I think it is not). It will tend to produce "unintended" side effects which often counter-act the desired corner solution, like that you are proposing here that we should go to the ends of the earth to do one specific thing, much as others will do on terrorism or immigration, etc. I certainly feel that laws which protect people from others are valid and necessary and much more easily enforced. Hence laws against domestic abuse or DUIs, assaults, etc make sense, but not laws which protect them from themselves, like laws against consensual sale of goods or services (ie, vice laws, blue laws, etc).

If you find that sort of law and moral behavior persuasive, it should be more reflective in other places than merely on alcohol bans. I'm thus basing your personal animus and disdain on alcohol on the fact that you appear far more comfortable banning it than some other legislative approaches to protecting citizens from themselves. The deaths and statistics are incidental to your personal position really. Large numbers of those deaths can be reduced without bans, and often have been (DUI related deaths for instance are much reduced for a variety of reasons). I have no objection to that, where it actually works to produce this end of reducing harms to large numbers of people. But to punish a majority of people for the irresponsibility of a few tends to produce useless policies that will be ignored and become difficult or impossible to enforce en masse (see: speed limits or the ban on marijuana, or even, the age limit on alcohol sales and its impact on age-related alcohol deaths on college campuses, it increases them rather than reduces them).