Hacker News Reader

Comment by larodi | Hacker News Reader

it is very important to also remind - no amount of alcohol is ever prescribed or sold in the pharmacies. the alcohol was legalized in order to a) reverse the ill effects of prohibition which led to birth of large-scale organized crime; b) to allow regulation of substances innit, as people were dying from bad booze.

likewise, nations may have to legalize in order to regulate the contents of whatever-white-powder users may stumble upon on the street. and let us be honest - no bombs can stop the Fentanil (or rat poison for all I care) from being mixed in.

View on HN

Sure, sure. But this is an argument that we shouldn't have special licensing schemes subsidizing some use via tax exemption ("medical").

Doctors sometimes prescribe alcohol and in these cases pharmacies do fill these orders.

Example.

Poisoning by methyl alcohol.

Ethyl alcohol is ok’ish (the regular stuff), while methyl alcohol can make you blind or dead even in small amounts.

I believe ethanol is not actually often given as an antidote for methanol poisoning in modern times. It does work as a competitive inhibitor of alcohol dehydrogenase (i.e. occupying the enzyme to convert ethanol to acetaldehyde, slowing the conversion of methanol to formaldehyde and on to formic acid, which is not eliminated quickly and causes metabolic acidosis) - allowing the methanol time to leave the body through excretion, and limiting formic acid levels. However, other drugs like fomepizole also inhibit alcohol dehydrogenase with lower toxicity than ethanol.

Yes, because if you're a hardcore liver-failure-in-three-years alcoholic, quitting cold turkey will kill you, and if you're in the hospital for some other issue, they will make sure you get some alcohol.

Doctors don't prescribe it to people who aren't already putting away 50 drinks a week.

I like your point that doctors prescribe things that are necessary to patients, alcohol is one of those things, and there are clear and well-understood examples of when it is medically necessary for a doctor to prescribe and administer alcohol to a patient.

I can bet they quite more often prescribe marijuana, or if you like - CBD or even THC in some cases. And historically, I've been told, the amount of morphine prescribed quite outpaces the alcohol prescriptions, right?

> the alcohol was legalized in order to a) reverse the ill effects of prohibition which led to birth of large-scale organized crime

This statement is historically incomplete, and geographically myopic.

Alcohol in the US was initially fully legal, then prohibited for a short period, then legalized again.

Elsewhere, laws differ, but alcohol is largely regulated but legal for adults in most (non-Islamic) countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com