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Comment by axtscz | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, alcohol has not always been "fine". There have been various times in history where alcohol was prohibited and in fact still is in some countries. As much as what happened is a travesty, alcohol may be a good comparison for what is happening with Cannabis. After the prohibition in the US, Alcohol became legal and frankly widespread. Perhaps the same thing will soon happen for weed

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Consumption of alcohol seems to be trending down in the West -- the figures for adult males' consumption in the 19th and early 20th century is shocking compared to today. So, lifting prohibition doesn't necessarily lead to higher consumption forever, there are cultural factors (and legal ones like drunk driving being taken more seriously than it once was) that reduce usage.

For those looking for a citation: https://daily.jstor.org/a-brief-history-of-drinking-alcohol/

In 1770, colonial Americans drank about 3.5 gallons of alcohol per year - today it’s roughly 2.3.

One thing I learned when visiting an old settlement in Iowa: the settlers of the time made sure to have a constant supply of beer. The rate they consumed beer seemed to mean they’d have a slight buzz throughout many days.

for a long time consuming ale was common also for kids in Europe since it was safer to drink than water.

In those time "beer" was drunk like water because it was safer than drinking the parasite and disease-infested water. Today we (mostly) all have water that is safe to drink.

This is apparently a bit of a myth. There was some knowledge of safe versus unsafe water. “Clean” water supplies weren’t uncommon and alcohol wasn’t a common substitute for clean drinking water.

That said, the beer was often weak and watered down so any mention of chronic use should be tempered by the strength of the drink.

The beer that was being consumed was often table beer, 3%abv at the absolute most. Made with a small amount of malt, left to ferment only a couple days. 3.5 gallons a year means about an ounce and a quarter a day. Drinking a gallon of 1%abv beer every day is probably not great for your liver but you might never feel an alcohol buzz from it.

Heavy drinking and all its bad effects were more common back then, but I don't think table beer is the culprit.

That number of 3.5 gallons per year is in terms of pure ethanol. 3.5 gallons of ethanol weighs 10,500 grams, which at 14 grams per standard drink is 750 drinks per year, or 2 drinks per day on average. That's quite a lot.

Right, I think we agree on the math here. When we read about people in the 18th century drinking beer with breakfast, they weren't having a standard drink. It was more likely a very low ABV drink.

If you drank a gallon of 1%ABV beer every day, you'd have 3.65 gallons of ethanol per year. That's not exactly what was happening - binges on whiskey and rum were common, but they weren't constantly buzzed, either.

That much alcohol is going to be bad for a liver no matter how you drink it. I don't think this was healthy. My point is just that there was less inebriation than we suppose when we think about drinking beer with breakfast

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