Comment by palmotea
6 hours ago
> including the part where alcohol isn't considered to be a drug for some strange reason.
It's not a strange reason. IIRC, most cultures have a culturally understood and tolerated intoxicant. In our culture, that's alcohol.
Human culture is not some strange robotic thing, where the expectation is some kind hyper consistency in whatever narrow slice you look at.
I don't object to alcohol being tolerated. But I do think that distinguishing it from other drugs is odd. Particularly when the primary reason given for regulating other drugs is their addictiveness which alcohol shares.
We tolerate a recreational drug. Lots of people regularly consume a recreational drug and yet somehow society doesn't split at the seams. We should just acknowledge the reality. I think people would if not for all the "war on drugs" brainwashing. I think what we see is easily explained as it being easier to bury one's head in the sand than it is to give serious thought to ideas that challenge one's worldview or the law.
> I don't object to alcohol being tolerated. But I do think that distinguishing it from other drugs is odd.
The point I was making is that it's not odd, unless you're thinking about human culture wrong (e.g. like its somehow weird that broad rules have exceptions).
> Particularly when the primary reason given for regulating other drugs is their addictiveness which alcohol shares.
One, not all addictive drugs are equally addictive. Two, it appears you have a weird waterfall-like idea how culture develops, like there's some kind identification of a problematic characteristic (addictiveness), then there's a comprehensive research program to find all things with that characteristic (all addictive substances), and finally consistent rules are set so that they're all treated exactly the same when looked at myopically (allow all or deny all). Human culture is much more organic than that, and it won't look like math or well-architected software. There's a lot more give and take.
I mean here are some obvious complexities that will lead to disparate treatment of different substances:
1. Shared cultural knowledge about how to manage the substance, including rituals for use (this is the big one).
2. Degree of addictiveness and other problematic behavior.
3. Socially positive aspects.
4. Tradition.
No? I don't never said (and don't believe) any of that. I don't think the legislative inconsistency is odd. As you rightly point out it's perfectly normal for rules to be inconsistent due to (among other things) shared culture. The former exists to serve the latter after all, not the other way around.
What I said I find odd is the way people refuse to plainly call alcohol what it is. You can refer to it as a drug yet still support it being legal. The cognitive inconsistency (ie the refusal to admit that it is a drug) is what I find odd.
I also find it odd that we treat substances that the data clearly indicates are less harmful than alcohol as though they were worse. We have alcohol staring us in the face as a counterexample to the claim that such laws are necessary. I think that avoidance of this observation can largely explain the apparent widespread unwillingness to refer to alcohol as a drug.
> One, not all addictive drugs are equally addictive.
Indeed. Alcohol happens to be more addictive than most substances that are regulated on the basis of being addictive. Not all, but most. Interesting, isn't it?
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