Daughter Is Sent to Jail

[Marco Anglesio]

On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Alec Ramsdell wrote:
> But alcohol is easily legally available, much more so than Xanax.  I'd
> say drug laws, and Noelle's case, are much more a matter of discipline
> than any particularities of substance.  

I don't see any reason why alcohol should be excempt from strict scrutiny. 
I should hope you agree that the social and personal costs of alcohol
consumption are considerable. Alcohol has a very strong (and not very
positive) disinhibiting effect on behaviour when consumed to excess. Hang
out at a crowded bar for an evening and you'll see what I mean. There are
also long- and short-term health effects.

If you were to set a guideline or legislate based purely on harm
reduction, you'd probably legalize substances such as ecstasy (MDMA) and
marijuana without much difficulty or debate. Alcohol, on the other hand,
would be touchy. The real difference is that alcohol can be consumed as
"food", with meals, rather than explicitly as a drug. Some cultures which
have adopted alcoholic beverages as "food" have considerable difficulty in
changing their method of consumption - for example, hard liquor sales in
Italy are very low. Whether it's possible to put the genie back into the
bottle is another topic entirely. 

Getting back to the point and away from the digression, I don't see a
reason why alcohol should be the benchmark for comparison when evaluating
drugs from a perspective of harm reduction. Just because people are
already drinking alcohol to excess doesn't mean they should; just because
people are already drinking alcohol to excess doesn't mean they should be
given carte blanche to consume drugs which produce similar negative
effects.

That said, drug laws (in general) are malum prohibitam, or evil by nature
of their being forbidden. You might make a convincing case against drug
and alcohol laws along these lines. 

m.

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