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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Imagine if the media covered alcohol like other drugs

Imagine if smoking a crack rock was an acceptable social function after thousands of years of existence and there were millions of casual crack smokers throughout the country. Alcohol is not the same as other drugs, it's socially ingrained in human society and you can't separate that while still having an intelligent conversation. Shouting 'hypocrisy' is not intelligent conversation.





low_ho_fosho  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Alcohol is still a drug, exactly the same as every other drug. It affects your brain, it gets you "high," and it has terrible side effects like addiction. I don't see how "this is just how things are" is a very good argument either. Alcohol has a relationship with humans because of how it is made: literally just fruit and grains that have gone bad. If another drug was as easy to make and available to every human society on Earth, then it would have become part of our culture too.

Weed is different because it only existed in China for most of it's history, and with a very low-THC content, requiring you to smoke a lot of it to get any kind of pleasurable high. Opium came close, derivatives are still used as medicine (morphine), but it also comes from a specific region meaning it isn't a part of global culture.

It is absolutely hypocrisy that we celebrate alcohol consumption but ban something as relatively harmless as marijuana. Society just doesn't want to admit it was wrong yet, but it will.

tacocat  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's such an intellectually lazy argument and it's a common one. It doesn't add anything to the discussion of drug reform and it ignores the reasons that alcohol is a huge part of society. Starting from a point of "This is how things are" allows you to explain why that shouldn't be the case instead of the equivalent of pointing at a kid in the cafeteria and whining that he has two ice creams and you don't have any.

low_ho_fosho  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

OK, that's just like, your opinion, man.

It's a common argument because it's a good argument. It absolutely adds something to the discussion, because it shows how our acceptance of alcohol is just a fluke of chemistry.

    it ignores the reasons that alcohol is a huge part of society.

Did I not explain why it was a huge part of society? It's easy to make, every human society has access to it, it's fun, and it allows you to be social. Other drugs are fun and let you be social too, they just haven't been as accessible as alcohol. It is ignorant and hypocritical to celebrate alcohol consumption while frowning upon the recreational use of other, safer drugs like marijuana.

    Starting from a point of "This is how things are" allows you to explain why that shouldn't be the case instead of the equivalent of pointing at a kid in the cafeteria and whining that he has two ice creams and you don't have any.

I can't figure what the point is you're trying to make here. Maybe you want to rewrite it?

MadEmperorYuri  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So hang on.. Are you guys arguing about what's a good argument for legalizing marijuana or what's a good argument for banning alcohol? Because the original article could go either way.

And that's important here because the article makes a far better argument for legalizing marijuana than it does for banning alcohol. And if you two are thinking about different conclusions that could be drawn, that might be an unseen disagreement going on here.

tacocat  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm arguing that you can't compare alcohol being legal to anything else being illegal without ignoring why it's legal and generally oversimplifying your point to the level of a grade school argument over what's fair

MadEmperorYuri  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So it's an argument from tradition? We have legal alcohol and illegal marijuana because history, therefore the present state of affairs is defensible?

If pointing out an inconsistency risen from historical circumstances is so childish, then I guess that would make Women's Suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Marriage Equality movement all "grade school arguments over what's fair" as well.

jewbey  ·  3207 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think the problem is that he wasn't necessarily defending it because of its traditional value. I think what he was trying to get across is that it is a relevant part of the issue, and one that was completely ignored by the article. I don't think it was pro-alcohol or anything, but a criticism of the argument itself. That was just my interpretation of the argument though, i don't want to be putting words in the tacocat's mouth.

tacocat  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You basically just compared buying a beer to slavery. You are part of the reason I don't talk about drugs on the Internet. I'm glad you're clever enough to find a rhetoric flaw with a statement by someone who probably agrees with you but I will continue to dread an orange hubwheel today.

MadEmperorYuri  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sorry, no. It's actually like I compared buying a beer to civil rights. What I did was illustrate the absurdity of your argument by applying it to a well-known situation that everybody has come to agree on. I did not alter the form of your argument.

Perhaps I should illustrate more clearly?

    I'm arguing that you can't compare interracial marriage being legal to anything else being illegal (e.g. gay marriage) without ignoring why it's legal and generally oversimplifying your point to the level of a grade school argument over what's fair

I just took alcohol and marijuana and replaced them with interracial marriage and gay marriage. That's it. I did not suggest that buying a beer is bad like slavery, so we should make it illegal along with marijuana.

crafty  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Alcohol is not the same as other drugs, it's socially ingrained in human society and you can't separate that while still having an intelligent conversation.

Alcohol is ingrained in dominant western culture, not all human society though. I don't think it's the easiest drug to come by in nature and has tons of detrimental side effects. Believe me, I get why alcohol is so central to us; it's part and parcel of the New Testament after all, but that still doesn't make its place in our society logical when you compare its harmful effects.

tacocat  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't usually talk about drugs on the internet because I don't like talking with people on the internet who want to talk about drugs. And for this one instance, talking about this in real life is even worse. Being high and unable to tell someone to shut up or politely leave is really boring.

On one hand I totally agree that pot is safe and not as harmful as alcohol, on the other hand, this argument is pushed to such a ridiculous extreme with people who really like getting high that they seem to think overwhelmingly that it doesn't impair their ability to maneuver a one ton box of steel, glass and manslaughter because they drive slower due to being paranoid.

I really never want to see alcohol compared to weed again when there are actual sobering (hehe) facts about the way drug users are treated as criminals.

It's not logical, it's hypocritical but that doesn't matter, there are a lot of illogical and hypocritical parts of society, but this argument that alcohol is worse just fills my mind with all the stoners I've known and got high with who make the same joke that no one gets high and hits their wife. The kind of people who care enough about drugs being legal to spout off about it are usually the kind of people who hinder that cause. No one else cares as much as you, we can buy a six pack. Try advocating for non violent offenders. Don't wake and bake a couple times a week. Alcoholics who get drunk in the morning get rejected by their families. The equivalent of wake and bake for alcohol is crippling dependence. All of you refocus your attention, it's not the same thing.

crafty  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sorry, I just don't think I'm following your argument, and if you don't want to talk about drugs, that's fine, I don't want to to goad you into a discussion you wanted to avoid in the first place. You did make a flippant top comment here and I assumed otherwise, so I apologize for responding.

_refugee_  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I don't think it's the easiest drug to come by in nature and has tons of detrimental side effects.

Dude, even animals get drunk. 2 It's just fermented fruit. Wherever there's fruit, and not all of it's been picked, you get alcohol. It's the easiest drug to come by in nature that I can think of, that humans consume.

crafty  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, alcohol is pretty easy to come by, but so are many psychedelic plants and fungi (just pick and eat if you have the right environmental knowledge). Cocoa leaves grow on trees, and while that's not the same as tacocat's crackrock metaphor, South American cultures have been chewing on them and making tea out of them for thousands of years. Marijuana and opium have been cultivated for a very long time too, picking and smoking them doesn't seem much more difficult than fermenting alcohol.

_refugee_  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Eh, my point here was kind of that it's so common even animals, who can't wield fire to smoke drugs, can come across it in nature and consume it. As for the psychedelic plants and fungi, I really think you'd be hard put to find any that grow as widely as the significantly broad category of "fruit," but I don't know enough about those species to really say. True about cocoa, I've actually had cocoa tea - but again, clearly, that's limited to a single continent, whereas fruit isn't.

thenewgreen  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

true. Some animals literally seek it out.

crafty  ·  3208 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, and it's not just fruit, but grains can ferment as well. Alcohol can be made pretty much anywhere. Alcohol certainly is one of the prehistoric intoxicants human society learned to consume thousands of years ago, but it is just one of many other naturally occurring drugs. That was my point, but you're totally right, alcohol is very common in nature.