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I sympathize with this in regards to full prohibition of alcohol unless you live in a sufficiently fallen society. Sufficient problem and prohibition is not only justifiable but a moral imperative and you are extremely unreasonable if you are not willing to consider that there is a red line. If your society has enough of a problem with alcohol abuse then it should be banned no question.
For example alcohol prohibition towards Indian "native" Americans is a no-brainer. It is extremely destructive towards them and makes them dangerous to others as well. Both how alcohol affects them, and the general problem of alcohol abuse in their community, is an example where the skepticism must be towards those who decriminalized it, at the expense of the people affected.
The trade offs in comparison to the examples you mention aren't there. Still, I also sympathize with considering idea of freedom even if it causes harm, provided the harm isn't large enough or comes with other significant benefits. Alcohol is damaging enough that the weight would fall in favor of prohibition except for one reason.
The only reason I don't support prohibiting it is because it is so entrenched culturally, and there is historical continuity and significance. So there is a more significant trade off because it is a more important part of living and past culture. Of more normal and respectable people too. So there is a point there. However these are advantages but of a much different nature than books, or getting faster to your destination than 25 miles per hour. But alcohol is bad enough. It carries a significant cost. And certainly restrictions and trying to curtail alcohol abuse is good.
We should put a line to it and prohibit harmful drugs who don't have that history. Alcohol is bad enough but its byproducts are too culturally significant. The rest of harmful drugs are not. The damage that alcohol abuse inflicts in society is bad enough and we should not allow more to be added to it.
Yes, there is a line where prohibition makes sense, but I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol. This is especially true given that alcohol has proven its ability to coexist alongside the development of advanced human societies over the course of several millennia.
You are making an argument of faith here based on an affirmation rather than sincerely considering whether the line has been crossed and examining the facts and where this doesn't pass, and where it passes. Because there are actual human societies that the line has been crossed.
I gave the most fitting example which is Indian country. The effect of alcohol towards them is a complete horror show. The level of harm it causes them far surpasses any possible benefit. There seems to be a genetic component to that even though this is also a field where there are those trying to deny race differences. https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2012.12010113
Even as it is these are the consequences worldwide: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/global-burden
These are significant consequences.
The prohibitions mentioned in the OP in South Africa might be another example of a good trade off. If your society is South Africa you kind of have to prioritize making it less of a failed society and reducing the violence.
Shouldn't the quality of the field in general make you a bit suspect of the line of causality here? I don't doubt that Native Americans engage in a lot of dysfunctional alcohol use, but I do doubt that the alcohol is what's causing the dysfunction.
More broadly, it's just kind of weird that alcohol putatively reduces societal health, but a map of state-by-state alcohol consumption is just about anti-correlated with longevity. Similarly, many of the hard-drinking countries around the world are doing great, and the places that don't drink are dysfunctional hellholes with short life expectancies (with the exception of a couple wealthy Gulf oil states). I suppose this is largely a product of wealthier places being able to buy more alcohol and the individuals that drink the most aren't doing great (Simpson's paradox style), but it's hard for me to look at Germany and France and think that they're actually missing out on a ton of longevity and productivity due to all the beer and wine.
It's the opposite. They are trying to deny and obfuscate because they oppose differences and want to talk about it in a politically correct manner. So there are debunkers pretending the issue doesn't exist and is just a negative stereotype. In the past there was a complete prohibition of alcohol sales to "Native Americans" .
Like many real issues, you are also going to find some talking about it.
There is in a fact a bigger problem of drunkedness, people being addicted to alcohol and dying in part due to that. Maybe they abuse the alcohol also for reasons of being impulsive, IQ related and so on but it doesn't change that the combo of them and alcohol works worse. Both in terms of behavior and health.
The issue is quantifiable. Even outside alcohol, when it comes to drugs one can see an increase of drug abuse in certain european countries due to less policing and a more pro drug culture.
Germany is still going to be better than muslim countries but Germans would live longer without alcohol consumption.
Sure, it is manageable even if it is probably among the top negative behaviors that affect life expectancy in countries like Germany. That is because Germans don't have that many problems and are successful. Most Muslim countries have more significant problems to worry about.
The issue becomes especially notable in some eastern european countries where it actually plays a more significant effect for bellow 80 years old life expectancy. Even in Germany, for alcohol abusers it does eat years from their life.
Men in Belarus live only 68 years and this was the country that had the highest alcohol consumption in the world in 2010! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31960526/
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/17/heaviest-drinking-countries/9146227/
Anyway, comparing countries like Germany with the worst is a losing game. You either compare with other successful societies that do certain things differently, or try to estimate how it would do, if it did things differently.
Now, you could argue that drinking is a common part of German culture, and although it can be done in moderation or you can have to the other extreme Eastern Europe type of disaster.
Here are some numbers of the top of a few seconds searching
https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/226333/The-use-of-psychoactive-substances-in-Germany-findings-from-the-Epidemiological-Survey-of-Substance-Abuse-2021
So based on the above numbers, it is 4.32% of total mortality.
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I think, if a society already has a strong taboo against alcohol consumption, there's good reason to maintain said taboo legally. Whatever benefits were gained historically, I'm not sure it matters now. And the taboo suppressing consumption would hopefully tamp down on the natural consequences of creating a black market good.
I've seen some Muslim reformers like Mustafa Akyol defend the right to drink alcohol as part of liberalizing Islam and I always thought it was not just a huge strategic error (I worry it seems very suspicious to focus on that element - which brings Muslim cultures more superficially in line with Western ones - to conservatives who might otherwise listen) but of little practical good and much harm anyway.
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The following winter (this was the year in which Cn. Pompey and M. Crassus were consuls [55 B.C.]), those Germans [called] the Usipetes, and likewise the Tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the Rhine , not far from the place at which that river discharges itself into the sea. The motive for crossing [that river] was, that having been for several years harassed by the Suevi, they were constantly engaged in war, and hindered from the pursuits of agriculture. The nation of the Suevi is by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans. They are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they yearly send from their territories for the purpose of war a thousand armed men: the others who remain at home, maintain [both] themselves and those-engaged in the expedition. The latter again, in their turn, are in arms the year after: the former remain at home. Thus neither husbandry, nor the art and practice of war are neglected. But among them there exists no private and separate land; nor are they permitted to remain more than one year in one place for the purpose of residence. They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which, a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in open rivers.
Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even as to laboring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals, which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labor by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is any thing regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library. Hirt-Gal 4.1-2.
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine which is brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed, and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or a state of madness. Consequently many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money which characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own godsend. For these transport the wine on the navigable rivers by means of boats and through the level plain on wagons, and receive for it an incredible price; for in exchange for a jar of wine they receive a slave, getting a servant in return for the drink.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History. Book V, Part 25.
I am the son of these people, who did not write down their own drinking habits so they are only described to us by others. We can cherry pick whatever quote we like, for example,
Did they drink always or never or somewhere in between? Maybe even, were they people much like us? Or me at least
Are you certain? After the Gaul population lost to the Romans, significant portions died and-or were enslaved. If we take Caesar's claims at face value, about one third of the population. If it is a propagandist claim inflated by factor of 10x or 100x, still humongous amount of people who never had descendants.
They lost their culture to the extent that precious little is known of pre-Roman Gallic culture and the language spoken in France is classified as Romance language, heavily descended from Latin.
Presumably the people least adapted to unmixed wine have died off by natural selection during the generations.
S_S did also mention the Suebi, who have plenty of descendants.
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Roman male slaves were not castrated and could indeed have descendants. Roman female slaves could also have descendants, both with male slaves and in the typical way of slavery.
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To be fair, drinking wine (and especially beer) does lower your T levels, so the Gauls were right about the feminizing influence of alcohol.
A Twitter autist I follow was suggesting that mead is the true chad drink due to honey's beneficial effect on T levels. Ergo, the masculine vigor of the vikings. More likely, any positive effects are lost when turning it into alcohol.
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it this a prohibition against alcohol or a prohibition against wine in particular? From the text it makes sense that it is a prohibition against alcohol because they are criticising the effects of alcohol but i can hypothesise a situation where they are against wine but freely drinking beer.
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Is this supposed to imply that the Suevi prohibited alcohol consumption entirely? Or just wine? Obviously the Nordic peoples of the Viking age were famously producers and drinkers of mead, and contemporary Germanic peoples famously enjoyed ale, so unless those were cultural innovations that arose centuries after the Suevi - or unless the Suevi were an outlier - I would assume that alcohol consumption was not unknown among their people.
Chiming in as an oenophile. The Romans introduced viticulture to (what is now) Germany in the 8th Century. Wine is all about soil and climate, and only certain regions in Germany produce wine; mostly river valleys in the southwest, but there is a little bit produced near Dresden in Saxony along the Elbe.
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Importation of unwatered wine by various Gaullish tribes is noted to have produced what appears to be a wide-spread plague of alcoholism. The price of wine rose so high that in addition to paying vast sums of precious metals to the merchants, the Gauls were willing to enslave their own and trade them for the stuff (who were promptly shipped to Roman vineyards and put to work making more wine grapes to be sent to Gaul). I added in a quote from Diodorus Siculus attesting to this to my post above.
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You should look into aboriginals in Australia, alcohol really fucks these people up.
Unfortunately, there are some people that cannot properly metabolize alcohol because their ancestors have not been degenerate drunks.
The same people who cannot properly digest milk because their ancestors never bothered to domestic cows
We keep warning you to stop shitting out one-liners, and you keep dropping in to do it. Two week ban, this time.
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How much time have you spent around Native Americans?
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Not even remote native communities with super high alcoholism rates, and where lots of kids get fetal alcohol syndrome?
Yes, but not native american societies. And there's plenty of evidence that Eurasians have had some serious selection pressure to help them deal with alcohol (and alcoholism is still a huge problem in Europe + North America).
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