Why haven’t humans ban alcohol?

In fact, many countries have banned alcohol, at some point in history. A typical example is the famous American period of Prohibition.

[After this paragraph, the word “alcohol” will be substituted for “alcohol,” which means beer and all other alcoholic drinks.]

Until the early 20th century, the most accurate word to describe America was “alcohol”. People drink alcohol almost all the time. They drink when they are happy to celebrate when sad to cheer up. Drink when it’s hot to refresh and drink when it’s cold to warm up… Nearly every reason is good enough to drink.

Until around 1920, the US Congress passed a ban on alcohol throughout the territory, also known as the Prohibition period. Alcohol is now considered a “drug” and the law prohibits the illegal production/sale/transport of alcohol. But this ban does not bring many positive effects, on the contrary, many new social problems arise.

When people want to drink, they will find ways. Alcohol can still be purchased at pharmacies every half a liter per 2 weeks with a doctor’s prescription. As a result, the number of drug retail branches increased sharply during the Prohibition period. The grape farms at that time also produced a kind of “fermented grape nuggets”, which noted that: “Be careful, when mixed with water for a long time, it can turn water into wine”.

In addition to the “Peaceful” ways, the American people also came for smuggled alcohol. The government was allegedly involved in the deaths of more than 10,000 people, for encouraging the use of industrial alcohol in smuggled alcohol to poison alcohol buyers [1].

This ban lasted for more than 10 years, until the Great Depression 1929–1930. Alcohol taxes and the employment opportunities of this industry have changed the decision of the US Congress. Franklin D. Roosevelt, after signing the order to abolish Prohibition, was sent a truck full of beer to the White House by the people.

But how can alcohol be banned, when they have been with humans through so many ups and downs of history?

Some historians said that because they wanted to drink more beer, prehistoric people actually actively cultivated, creating an agricultural revolution [2]. Archeology also shows that the first recorded recipe in the world was a recipe for alcohol [3].

But the root of alcohol is not enough to overwhelm its harm. Alcohol has been linked to throat cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer … and many other diseases. Alcohol is one of the leading avoidable cause for death [4]. Only the harmful effects of alcohol on health and society alone can be written into a complete book. That’s why alcohol is the most damaging substance to society. When considering the level of harm to the user’s body, it is only after cocaine, meth. [5]

It is worth mentioning that, most of the research on alcohol is sponsored by the world’s leading liquor corporations. An article in NYT pointed out that alcohol/beer corporations sponsored and dominated the results of research by US government agencies (NIH) — even interfered with survey/experiment design. In other words, they paid NIH to conclude that “drinking in moderation is good for your health” [6].

Recent studies have shown that drinking alcohol is unhealthy, regardless of how much you drink [7].

But even when alcohol is harmful, the choice of drinking is still up to everyone — at least until it doesn’t affect others.

Therefore, instead of banning alcohol, laws in many countries are more restrictive in reducing the impact of alcohol on society, such as banning drinking while driving or working.

To be able to argue more about this issue, see you in the debate at the weekend.

Source:

[1] https://www.snopes.com/.../government-poison-10000.../

[2] https://news.stanford.edu/.../crafting-beer-lereal.../

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer

[4] https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption

[6] https://www.vox.com/.../health-effects-alcohol-moderate...

[7] https://www.thelancet.com/.../S0140-6736(18)31571-X/fulltext

Other:

- https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm — health risk

- https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/.../alcohol-facts-and-statistics — facts and statistíc

- http://www.tac.vic.gov.au/.../drink.../effects-of-alcohol — effect of alcohol