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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

How should they tackle the "root cause?" It is fine to criticize the existing solutions, but this isn't offering a counter proposal that could be used when they're scrapped (and until this proposal exists and comes on-tap, they're better than nothing).

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The root causes vary, but include mental health issues and poverty in general. We should instead focus on those issues more.

The main alcohol related root cause is the culture of binge drinking. The way to tackle that is to create and encourage a culture of moderate drinking. Change licensing laws to make it easy for families to go to pubs for example.

And also have more sources of entertainment for early-20s adults than bars. I've lived in many smaller towns in the USA where the only entertainment after 8pm was a bar.

> binge drinking. The way to tackle that is to create and encourage a culture of moderate drinking

In scotland?? Drinking culture is tied in to masculinity at least in the UK midlands ('beer or queer' - that kind of shit though thankfully fadin) and I'll bet it's the same in scotland. And you've got an entire drug industry, the drinks industry, working hard to get people to abuse, NOT use, to ABUSE to excess, their product.

It's a deep problem with very difficult solutions. Externalised costs of capitalism, shitty lives, poverty, people who can't see a way out and if offered won't take it...

From what I've seen the beer is manly culture is going away. There's also a lot more awareness of drinking levels and sobriety. It's far easier and more socially acceptable to drink moderately now. These changes are mostly driven by healthy living concerns.

Educating people about lifestyle is proving effective.

Well here in America we don't pass regulatory laws until there's a proven solution that has consensus from all parties.

How do you prove a solution without trying it?

My comment was to be taken as a joke and also not untrue. The current state of our Congress is that one Party controls the Senate and refuses to bring any legislation to the floor, and the other Party controls the House and refuses to hold anyone accountable for anything using the excuse that it won't make it through the Senate.

So because no one agrees on anything, nothing gets done.

I think it was sarcasm.

When did that start?

Uh... I'm guessing Neoconservatives in the 60s? There have been many strategies over the years to make the Federal Government ineffective. In the 80s they did the whole Starve the Beast thing. More recently it's locking up budget talks and shutting down the government.

These days Moscow Mitch just sits on his hands and does nothing.

* I'm not blaming Republicans, Nancy Pelosi and her buddies have been doing similar shenanigans in the House. Currently she refuses to address any serious legislation in the House using the fact that it will never make it through the Senate as an excuse.

Honestly the behavior of both leaders has the same net effect and makes you wonder if they're both working towards the same goal.

Jordan Peterson had a really good point when asked about alcohol and drugs, and he said the question should be why aren't we all doing them? His proposed solution to that was that people had to have some specific thing in their lives, that was powerful enough that it was more important to them than alcohol.

It is like societies response to suicide prevention: put up a fence, don't make the people who want to jump not want to jump.

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