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Comment by armandososa | Hacker News Reader

* My grandfather was an alcoholic and caused lots of damage to my dad's infancy.

* Teenagers are amazingly stupid already. They are stupid and dangerous when driving under the influence of alcohol. A very dear friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver.

* Drunk girls are raped by drunk stupid men all the time. My cousin got pregnant at 14 because of this.

When you don't drink is when you can really see how big of a problem alcohol really is. Starting with social drinking, which means that some people are absolutely incapable of have social bonding or plain fun without any alcohol. Pathetic.

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* Neglectful parents are a very important problem.

* Drunk driving is a very important problem.

* Rape is a very important problem.

* And people demonizing me (a drinker) for crimes that I do not commit... is a very important problem.

Put those pieces of shit in jail for the crimes they commit and let mature people (the vast majority of society) be.

PS: Approximately 80% of all drunk drivers are adults (21 and older, I'll give you 20 as teenagers). So you should probably stop blaming teenagers so much too... Source: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#Fi...

The issue is not whether you or any number of people can 'handle' X (whatever X is), the issue is, Is X, when it and its consequences are considered in their entirety, a net positive or not? Also, stating that alcohol has a pernicious effect on society doesn't imply that one is demonising drinkers at all. Some might do that, but it is not implied in the statement.

In the UK something like 90% of crime is alcohol related, most A&E admissions are alcohol related, etc. As someone who used to drink (i.e. take alcohol) and now doesn't, I feel qualified to agree with armandososa that for many it's not until you stop drinking that you really become sensitive to many of its negative effects such as those he/she mentioned.

Edit: in case it's not absolutely clear, I am sure you are a good person whether you drink or not. That does not mean that widespread use of alcohol is good for society.

Fair enough. I often just feel attacked in topics such as this, some people are not so careful to avoid demonising drinkers in general.

Anyway, I think my point distilled is that although alcohol may be very commonly involved in crime that doesn't mean that crime is actually very common.

And for what it's worth (not much, since this isn't my field of study ;), I'd say that alcohol probably never caused rape. You have to be pretty damn fucked up in the first place to rape somebody, normal people will never do it no matter how much alcohol you put in them.

distilling your point eh ;-). I agree about alcohol probably not 'causing' rape, but perhaps it can loosen those final inhibitions for those sick enough to consider it.

At the very least, having sex with someone who's passed out and unable to consent is rape; those rapes, at the very least, could not be committed without some type of drug to cause the person to pass out, and alcohol is the most legal and most widely used drug that has that effect.

I'm quite inclined to think that rape is far more common than you think. Most rapists are perfectly "normal" people in their everyday lives.

Rapists are, by definition, not normal. The untrained layman might not be able to pick them out, just like sociopaths often manage to slip under the radar in day to day affairs, but they are fundamentally a different sort of animal.

I'm not sure what definition of "rapist" or "normal" you're using, but the typical rapist is probably closer to "selfish asshole on a first date" than "masked man hiding in the bushes". And selfish assholes are frankly very common.

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