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Comment by jackmott42 | Hacker News Reader

>Since when is my productivity his problem?

We are all in this together, our behaviors are all shared problems. The more important lesson from prohibition is that prohibition just doesn't work. There may be other ways to disincentivize the behavior though. If there was a way to do it, we would all save tons of money on health care, have less drunk driving deaths, less deaths due to various violence, get more done, etc etc

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Prohibition does work provided the culture around drinking changes. Look at countries where alcohol is prohibited much lower rates of cirrhosis and alcohol related diseases. US prohibition didn’t work because most of US culture was not ready to give up alcohol and it was only implemented for about less than a decade. But if alcohol was banned for a larger time period, more education and cultural shift efforts, and more uniform enforcement, we would see much better outcomes and cultural attitudes change.

Yes, we just need to try harder. Maybe institute a special anti-alcohol secret police, or put people in prison for 25-life if they drink. The Rockerfeller laws were super great, we need more of that.

We could also provide incentives for people to stay inside and play around with their phones, that will encourage less drinking. Also, it seems like, when people get together, they often drink, so maybe we could make assembling in large groups illegal.

Finally, I've read that breathing exercises like left nostril breathing can induce altered states similar to drunkenness, and also that taking OTC pills like sleeping pills can cause inebriation. We should ban all psychoactive OTC pills and keep a close eye on people doing yoga.

You make fun and light of efforts to limit the effects on toxins on society, but I’m sure if you saw people dying as a result of alcoholic cirrhosis or the many diseases and incidents occurring from alcohol abuse you would change your mind if you are a reasonable person, about the current drinking culture.

But as people die these terrible deaths, you continue to make fun of the situation. Consider.

Both my grandparents on one side died of lung cancer. I still smoked until I switched to vaping (which may yet have consequences). Your assumptions are less universal than you seem to think.

Dude, I have an uncle killing himself with booze living 100 feet away from me. These things have costs. But trying to make decisions for people doesn't work out, and taking away one of the few things that helps people connect in person is also a dumb idea.

Reducing availability of access certainly does work at taking away poisonous substance exposure. Plus people can connect in person in so many better ways, on dignified and beneficial grounds rather than the ultimate harm that comes from drinking culture.

It’s common in our culture to parrot about letting people make their own decisions… where does that take us when it comes to things like covid? When a culture promotes a harmful practice we should call it out. Just like we call out injustice, certainly it is unjust to support a drinking culture that results in so much harm.

I'm curious on the data for the places with heavier alcohol prohibition. In particular, my understanding to date has been that the US is one of the more shaming of alcohol around. What places are there where alcohol is prohibited, that you are looking at?

Please see this paper and the sections on alcoholic cirrhosis

> In north Africa and the Middle East, alcohol-related liver disease constituted the lowest proportion of age-standardised prevalence and death rates.19 This finding could be expected, because alcohol is prohibited in many of the countries in this region, which could lead to both decreased use and the possibility of under-reporting.

> Among GBD regions, the highest proportions of cirrhosis deaths due to alcohol-related liver disease were in central Europe (44·0%), western Europe (41·7%), and Andean Latin America (38·1%; figure 4; appendix p 41). The proportion of cirrhosis deaths due to alcohol-related liver disease was lowest in north Africa and the Middle East (5·3%) and in Egypt specifically (4·8%), and highest in Belgium (53·5%; appendix p 41).

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1...

Also see these maps:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...

From this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7650014/

Thanks for the links. Interesting data all around. Not entirely sure what to make of it, but I suspect most of that is from prejudices I hold on some of these areas.

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