this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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This is particularly American sensibility about not drinking alcohol casually around children. It's very strange. In the UK and Europe, if a kid is having a birthday party at their house it's completely normal for the adults to be having a casual beer or wine and socialising whilst the children play, obviously not drinking to get drunk and within the legal limits for the driver.
Hiding it from kids obviously will prevent them from ever using it or being curious!
God forbid we have open and honest conversations with kids so they learn how to use things responsibly.
Given that alcohol is a hard drug with severe social and personal consequences when abused i find that sentiment a bit shortsighted. We rightfully don't accept casual consumption of cocaine or heroin around children. We shouldn't set the model that alcohol is just a casual thing to consume on any given afternoon.
Me and many friends as teenagers wen we got shitfaced in unhealthy and dangerous ways just laughed at our parents critizising us, because of how normalized their consumption was.
So between responsible consumption and casual consumption is a huge difference. Especially when there is small kids around, who might end up just drinking from the jar right in their reach.
So hiding it and not telling kids about it is a solution, which makes them curious, and then go eat overboard. Which is what I did.
What is much better is what Europeans do, where they have a much healthier view of alcohol, grow up around it, know what it is and does, and don't have nearly the unhealthy binging Americans do. On top of that they also aren't having an opioid crisis.
So did you also do other hard drugs because they were hidden from you? Heroin, Coke, Crack, Meth?
The opiod crisis has an entirely different basis to them, as tons of Americans were made addicted by reckless prescriptions first.
And again, seeing my and other parents drink regularly did not stop us from being reckless around alcohol. Instead what it does makes clear signs of alcoholism not be taken as warning. "Dad had two beers every day, whats the harm in three?"
There is things the US does badly, like not allowing alcohol until 21 and then giving access to vodka and beer alike, where many European countries have different ages for booze and lower strength alcohol. But the idea that people in Europe are more responsible around alcohol doesn't hold to reality. The US had about 120k alcohol related deaths per year, which jumped to 180k with the pandemic. Germany is at a stable 60-70k a year. But Germany has less than one fourth of the US population.
Got it, so alcohol and hard drugs are different and we shouldn't directly compare them like that
Alcohol is a hard drug. The opiod crisis not being such a thing in Europe is a result of opiods not being downplayed and casualized like in the US, so the reason why the US has an opiod crisis and we have such an alcohol problem are similar. But you drew a line from casual alcohol abuse to somehow work against opiod problems. But more alcohol abuse doesnt lead to less opiod abuse or the other way round.
What are you even talking about? The per capita death rates differ from what you're posting (making up?) here. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the death rate from alcohol use disorders in Germany is 9.2 per 100,000 population, whereas in the United States, it is 14.3 per 100,000 population. That's a substantial difference. Are you a recovering alcoholic or lose someone to alcohol or something? It's fine that you are against alcohol, but you're making false comparisons and citing false data to do so.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7308a1.htm
180k/330 Mio = 54 Alcohol related deaths per year and 100k people in the US.
https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/suchtbericht-alkohol-und-tabak-toeten-jedes-jahr-zehntausende-menschen-in-deutschland-a-19d17c83-3439-4291-8034-a6f32325e8a7
60k / 80 Mio = 75 Alcohol related deaths per year and 100 k people in Germany.
More people per capita die in Germany from alcohol abuse than in the US. I have no idea which numbers you have there. They are way off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_drug_abuse
and "its just one glass of wine" can be equally said with "its just a small bump of coke" or "its just half an oxy"
Your own Wikipedia link puts alcohol dramatically lower than cocaine and heroin in terms of dependence and harm. Were you raised by alcoholics or something? If so, sorry, that sucks.
Social harm is much higher with alcohol. There used to be a graph plotting both social and physical harm, but it got replaced with the one you criticise, effectively stating the same thing. Alcohol in its effects for both the individual and society is a hard drug, like coke, heroin or meth.
But the way you get defensive makes me wonder why aconowledging alcohol to be a serious drug with huge damage both to individuals and society is so difficult.
K.
No, not really. Each person is different, set and setting are different, circumstances can be different.
In any case that silly graph you posted was made by:
"opinions and judgment of 15 researchers, doctors, and a journalist. These opinions were exchanged and discussed during a 1-day workshop" ..... "given that it has no input other than the experience and knowledge of the participants involved, it is unlikely to be unbiased"
Although to be fair, the group that made that study now is advocating ways to get medical cannabis and psychedelics to people, which is more or less in line with the graph I suppose.
I am all about being honest about calling alcohol a drug, but a "hard drug"? Buddy...
See my comment here: https://feddit.org/post/4625794/3061984
Disingenuous bullshit - there is no such thing as "casual consumption of heroin." You can't use heroin without getting high, but you can absolutely drink alcohol without getting drunk.
Yeah, not drunk, just a little tipsy, its just to take the edge off, just to relax a bit...
You're unironically putting alcohol on par with cocaine and heroin? You really missed your calling as a roller-pin-wielding prohibitionist by 100 years.
Not even that. Could've been a DARE spokesperson.