Something about the timber industry
This is a non-US perspective, but my take is this:
Alcohol production has a long and rich history. Many cultures, in particular western, have their own relationships to alcohol. The development of different alcohol production processes tells a lot about the history of a culture.
Belgian monks with their beer brewing styles. Scotch whiskey. French wine yards. Even Japanese with their sake.
Remove wine from France, and we will have another French Revolution with guillotines again. It’s difficult to remove something that’s so heavily ingrained in the culture without public outrage. Alcohol is part of the identity.
Few cultures have marijuana as part of their identity, hence it’s easier to ban.
In Soviet Russia and Tsarist Russia vodka was a big source of state revenue. During the Bolshevik revolution they cut down on alcohol since they thought it wasn’t good for the population as a whole. It got restarted later by using the same factories and changed the bottles to include a red star on it.
People who drink alcohol are more likely to vote than people who use other drugs.
They wanted an excuse to lock up people of color and disrupt communities. With the civil rights act, they couldn’t go old school. So they invented the “war” on drugs specifically because blacks and Latinos were stereotyped as being cannabis smokers. This is all about racism.
Not everything in the world revolves around the US…
Sure but this does
How do you know where the OP is located? Alcohol is legal in most countries, and cannabis is illegal in most. This question applies almost anywhere in the world.
And the US has exported marijuana prohibition all over the globe.
The US wasn’t even the first to ban it. In 1937 Marijuana Tax act was passed that effectively prohobited it, but a full ban came in 1970. Countries that banned it before 1937 include, but are not limited to: Thailand, Irish free state, Romania, UK, Indonesia, Australia, Lebanon, Sudan, Italy, Panama, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Jamaica, Greece, Singapore…
Technically, we were the first to make any Cannabis legislation, in 1619.
Only problem, it was to force folks to grow it.
Seems the church was the first to ban it’s use in 1484, does papal law count? Not sure on Tony’s Sources.
Sure does, the Papal States was a country back the.
In this case it is. Cannabis laws globally were influenced, often coerced by the U.S., so the race issues that made cannabis illegal here affected much of the world for decades and still does.
My answer to the OP’s question, I think alcohol fits in a capitalist society better than cannabis. Same with caffeine and nicotine. Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are addictive, (caffeine arguably also facilitates labor), and don’t tend to cause pondering one’s place in the world, etc.
However when the context is the US, you can keep your edginess to yourself.
How is the context here the US exactly?
Because what is legal and not does not involve all that much logic.
Honestly i am dumbfounded always on this as well, especially since the Bible itself prohibits or at least highly discourages alcohol
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians 5%3A18&version=NIV
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs 20&version=NIV
Proverbs 31, verses 6 and 7 encourage it
Should you have alcohol?
The bible: Yesn’t
Religion aside, splitting (black and white thinking) isn’t a well -rounded perspective.
Idk, I just heard those verses from someone and always thought it was not allowed lol, there is definitely more nuance though, it’s not really a direct contradiction but eh i am too lazy to think about the reason, you shouldn’t be drinking at all anyway imho, it’s literally poison, there are other ways to ‘have fun’
Two things really.
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Tradition. Alcohol has a long history in European culture and by immigration the United States. It’s common to have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner, the rich will impress their friends with the extravagant alcohol they drink serve, you take a glass of wine at communion… heck at one point weak beers were drunk more than water, because at the time nobody knew what made water safe to drink but everyone could tell if beer smelled rotten.
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Production. Marijuana is easy to grow, but it takes a lot of time and space to produce. Alcohol on the other hand you need something with sugar and some yeast or starter. It can be fermented in some corner of the basement or even a cupboard. It’s so hard to control the production of alcohol even in prisons there’s usually somebody fermenting pruno somewhere and that’s one of the most controlled and monitored environments. It’s really hard to prevent people from brewing some form of alcohol because it’s about as easy as making bread.
When you combine these two you end up with the disaster that occurred when the United States tried to ban alcohol during prohibition. An easy to produce intoxicant with a large market was suddenly banned, when people started looking for more organized crime stepped in to fill the void.
It‘s a shame I had to scroll down so far to see the second half of your explanation. The point about production is why trying to outlaw alcohol is so much more insane than trying to outlaw any other drug. The moment an apple leaves its tree, it starts producing alcohol. There‘s a reason alcohol is ingrained in so many cultures: It gets created basically everywhere, with and without human interaction.
Yeah, there’s no good way to shut down the production of alcohol. All you need to make it is water, air (wild, airborne yeast), and food (sugar) and if you don’t have one of those things then you have bigger problems than prohibition laws.
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Money.
William Randolph Hurst
They tried to make it illegal and the results were disastrous, one could argue the same for marijuana but the campaign to keep it illegal was much more successful.
That’s because cannabis was more popular with black people in the 70s. The racists used the cannabis laws against blacks because it gave them a bonner
It definitely started much earlier than that, but yes.
Bootleggers and alcohol could deposit their money in bank accounts. Legal groups can not.
Autocorrect is AI powered now… 🎉
Ooh, no wonder it fails. Tyvm, I have been paying more attention to my posts, but autocorrect corrected, sometimes when the word is still in my vision field, often outside it (possibly a dodgy connection), but when I re-correct words several times and it still automatically incorrect it is especially annoying.
At this point t9 worked better.
Because the last time we tried to ban it went really really well.
I know this is a really common comparison, but I feel like this is also kind of weird. I personally believe both should be legal with obvious constraints in the realm of drunk driving/etc. Basically, do what you want with your body as long as you aren’t risking undue harm on others.
Main point though, I don’t feel like it’s a sound argument to equate the legality of alcohol to the legality of marijuana. Making either illegal is shaky on their own merits and trying to put both in the same category makes both look unfavorable.
Because so many people are addicted to it, even the lawmakers are addicted to it. And as other commenters have said, we tried prohibition in the past and it did not work. Society lost their collective minds.
Tradition, mainly. It’s so ingrained in the majority of cultures that you can’t simply uproot it with a law. Although it should be a more controlled substance, no doubt about that. It’s addictive, debilitating, incredibly harmful and it simply destroys more lives than literally any drug known to man.
I came here to say this. This is really the real response. “Prohibition didn’t work” isn’t the reason, it’s the results of a response.
It’s also one of the most dangerous drugs to try to quit. Going cold turkey on alcohol can very well be lethal.
It can, if you’re drinking seriously large amounts, but one of the most dangerous drugs in this regard? I have no scientific background in this but I’m skeptical there aren’t worse drugs in that regard
With alcohol people’s bodies literally become physically dependent so they actually die when they stop drinking it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_withdrawal_syndrome
Wikipedia says 50% of alcoholics attempting to quit have these symptoms.
Withdrawal from most drugs sucks a lot but not a lot of them are lethal
As an alcoholic 11 years sober, the only substance I know of that can kill you when quitting is alcohol. When AA started, they would keep alcohol in their house when helping others get sober so they wouldn’t die from DTs.
what about women?
lol at the 5 misogynists downvotes.
Using gendered language, such as “known to man,” is outdated and overlooks the contributions of individuals who don’t identify as men. It’s not just about being politically correct; it’s about being accurate and inclusive. Language shapes our perception of reality, and by using more inclusive language, we acknowledge and respect the diversity of contributions across all genders. Calling this out isn’t about policing language for the sake of it; it’s about moving towards a society that values everyone’s contributions equally. Let’s push for language that includes everyone, reflecting the true diversity of human achievement.
That would be semen.
Men can drink semen, too.
Checkmate, atheists!
some women drink too, I’ve seen it first-hand
Pharmaceutical companies don’t want it legal for one thing. There are other reasons but they along with police inions have lobbied against legalization for years.