Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

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1) Alcohol is actually worse than X for almost all X

2) Most people don't think alcohol is bad enough to be illegal

3) Therefore logically those same people should agree that X shouldn't be punishable with criminal sanctions, as its use is no worse than things we already tolerate.

I.E. The argument presupposes that alcohol should be legal because most people think it should be. This is often used as a form of argument because it hangs off ideas people already have about the world and asks them to think logically/consistently. "If I can have a beer and not ruin my life, and objectively X is less bad than beer, maybe my opinions on X can adjust".

If you want to talk about alcohol being a pretty evil substance, I'm not going to argue.

I think this is something that's often lost in the debate too - you don't have to wholeheartedly approve of the use of something to want to see it legalised, just acknowledge that applying criminal charges to use is both unjust and deeply unhelpful to society and individuals.

ad 1) that is a disputable assumption, but sure

ad 2) as you've said - it's interpreted as "alcohol should be legal". Such interpretation is arguable, but still it makes sense under some views on ethics.

ad 3) this doesn't follow logically from 1) and 2). You have to add new assumption: "2.5) There exist people who believe both in 1) and 2)". Going from "something is true" -> "there are people who believe" is also an invalid reasoning, similarly to the previous: "most people believe" -> "should"

Obviously, you're right in the last paragraph, the polarization makes the debate a bit pointless. The middle ground is quite vast, in fact.

Point 1 is not all that disputable nor is it an assumption. The scientific studies on the matter tend to support alcohol being one of the worse drugs we know about, in terms of harm to the individual, addiction potential and harm to society. It is exceeded by heroin, cocaine and tobacco, but little else (maybe meth I guess).

Point 2 is not an interpretation - it's again a fact, most people (over half) in western societies like the US and UK drink alcohol, a proportion which rises if we just look at the adult population. I'm not making the argument that alcohol should be legal, I'm saying that most people already think that. I agree here, if you want to be pedantic, that their consumption does not prove that, only implies it, but there is also likely a proportion of non-drinkers who think it should be legal. So again - I'm not making any claims about whether alcohol should be legal, I am making claims about the likely views of your interlocutor in a debate about legalisation.

Point 3 is simply stating that given point 1 is true (which it is, empirically, to the best of our current knowledge) and you are talking to someone in group 2 (which you probably are), then if they want to be self-consistent they ought to examine any negative views on legalisation.

This is an explanation of why an argument along the lines of "booze is legal" is often made and may be effective. NOT an attempt at a formal proof for why any particular drugs should be legal in isolation or a justification of alcohol's status. As such I'm afraid I find your response overly nit-picky.

A perfectly valid response to the argument is "But I don't necessarily agree that alcohol should be legal", which then widens the terms of the debate.

Sorry for sounding nit-picky, I didn't want to undermine your argument as I agree with you.

The only problem I find is that, even if 1) and 2) are true, and you are talking to someone in group 2), it doesn't entail that the person believes that "1) is true". They still may be perfectly self-consistent by rejecting 1).

Talking just from my experience (anecdotal evidence, I know) most people from the group 2) would reject 1). People don't know the scientific studies or do not trust them enough to be convinced.

That's fair enough, and I agree, people can be very reluctant on that front.

It goes against a lot of conditioning that drugs are just plain bad, and it appears to contradict their lived experience in which they don't think they've really had an issue with alcohol so it must be OK. Not like those other things where people get addicted and get into all sorts of trouble. It's just a beer. Never mind aunt Theresa who died falling down the stairs, drunk as a skunk, at the age of 40 because her cirrhotic liver just burst like an overripe melon when she hit the bottom step. Or your friend's mum who they're not on speaking terms with because she put her drinking habit ahead of feeding her kids when she was young. If anything that just adds to the conviction that drugs must be so much worse, because drugs are bad, and this is 'just' a beer.

Personally I have a complex relationship with alcohol. I brew at home but I'm not blind to the damage it's done to me (thankfully just some pretty bad hangovers and behaving like an arse from time to time, well, and the belly) or to others.

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