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Comment by npsimons | Hacker News Reader

> Prohibition does work

It didn't. We tried it.

Look, I'm all for reducing consumption. I'm on board with trying to improve public health, or just health of everyone in general. But prohibition does not work. Didn't work for alcohol. Didn't work for marijuana. Didn't work for sex education.

So the question to ask is, what does work? And realize that an all or nothing, black and white approach is counterproductive.

Educate, inform, regulate. That's the best we can do, and there's a lot of room in the 'regulate' part to make inroads. Perhaps someday we'll get to synthehol, but we're a long way from that today.

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I’ve already outlined why US prohibition didn’t work. Basically it was not long enough and a major cultural shift did not occur in US drinking culture.

A concerted effort and taking advantage of the current rise in sober culture can really help lower rates of alcohol consumption. We saw this so the decline in tobacco usage.

It’s not correct to say any prohibition does not work based on US prohibition in the 1920s. Prohibition for anything can reduce its access and use among people. It’s one of our best tools in preventing problems. This is a false belief in American culture that prohibition of substance does not work, it clearly does work in many countries worldwide in terms of lowering health problems due to alcohol abuses.

In the case of things like marijuana, sex education, these are cultural failures. In both cases, the culture was trending towards engaging in these. Prohibition must also enter the cultural attitudes to be greatly effective, but even a general prohibition over a long scale has an effect.

So you are saying that cultural attitudes overwhelm legal restrictions.

If people want to drink or smoke marijuana then legality does not matter very much and just pushes people into criminal activity.

So the idea that the only reason legal prohibition failed is that it didn't last long enough is refuted.

You want people to drink less, change attitudes, not the law.

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