My friends Phil Cook (economics and public policy, Duke) and Peter Reuter (public policy and criminology, Maryland) have a very nice essay forthcoming in the journal Addiction, under the provocative title, "When is alcohol just another drug? Some thoughts on research and policy." It addresses the question of why, when people talk about abusable drugs, they aren't usually thinking of alcohol, and makes a strong case for considering alcohol and controlled substances together as a research topic - taking clues from alcohol policies and problems about the likely consequences of legalizing cannabis.
The editors were so pleased by the essay they asked other people to write short commentaries. This is generally understood as an invitation to bloviate at will, and in any case I had nothing much to add to the Cook and Reuter thesis, which is solid, important, and tightly argued. Instead, I indulged in a little bit of cultural and media criticism. The issue of Addiction containing this material won't appear until June or July, but the editors have kindly permitted me to post my musings here, in the hopes that some readers will be motivated to look up the underlying paper when it appears. It should go without saying that neither Cook nor Reuter bears any responsibility for what appears below.
If you have substantive suggestions or literary corrections to offer (in the comments section below), I still have time to make revisions.
Alcohol as a Drug: A Moral Revolution
“In terms of its effects on the human body and psyche, alcohol is simply another psychoactive substance.” This sentence, with which Cook and Reuter begin their very able essay, embodies a proposition that will be taken as a truism by most readers of this journal, but would be regarded as a fallacy, an outrage, and an insult by many, if not most, ordinary citizens.
Why is that claim controversial, and why does the rejection of that claim matter?
It is controversial, I would submit, because the mood in which the public, its elected representatives, and their appointed officials consider drugs, drug-taking, and drug policy has little to do with the calm, evidence-based, policy-analytic tone taken by Cook and Reuter. The two scholars do not recite, because they do not believe, the basic credo underlying the international drug control regime, as well as the drug policies of most countries: outside a strictly medical context, drugs are fundamentally evil, drug-taking is both harmful and morally culpable, and drug-takers require some mixture of treatment and punishment. It is this credo that is threatened by any attempt to treat alcohol as a drug.
Article comments
1 - Douglas Mays
OK, to me the fact that alcohol is NOT a classified drug IS PURE IDIOCY and really shows that our leaders that weld the foundation of our nation are not smarter than a 5th grader.
Sure, it is politics. The alcohol lobbyists are sure a problem. Alcohol is the most dangerous tonic you can throw into your body(I've seen it all very close, friends and I worked in a Class A emergency room). Let us put crack and meth as a tie for #1 with the booze. I dunno, if I was a senator, I would just take one of those lobbyists behind Senate chambers and break his knees.
Answer me this: of all the money brought in from alcohol, what percentage is from chronic alcohol abusers? Your heavy drinker can go thru such a huge amount of money it is not funny (I know from watching people I know with a problem drink. The $ amount would surprise you).
The answer is likely around 50%. Of course we would need to get a few groups to gather information on that one. The industry would never give a real figure.
My point is that the government drug forces are a bunch of assholes (and far beyond) for this criminal deception.
No, I do not use drugs. I have moved way beyond that.
best,
Douglas
2 - TK
Being a senator and drinker I would just take one of these blonde bimbos, put her in my Oldsmobile and drive the bitch into a pond at Chapaquitic and let her drown. Dont let the wife see this.
Sincerely,
Ted Kennedy
SCUM BAG
RIP MARY JOE
3 - Victor Plenty
Sometimes hate becomes a drug that makes people just as stupid as alcohol can make them.
(Just in case any confusion arises later, this observation is not a response to the admirable Douglas Mays, but is prompted by the cowardly commenter signing as "TK")
4 - Douglas Mays
Victor, you ROCK!
best,
DM
5 - Janet
I could use a good read right now and this book sounds promising. I work in an alcohol rehab for few good years now and in all my experience I learned that there is no difference between alcohol and the rest of the drugs, they all lead to the same thing: addiction.
6 - Tex74
Remember The Old Indian Proverb: "First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man,"
Anyone who can read or listen to radio or tv or attends a concert or car-racing event where alcohol is King knows full well that alcohol is the most destructive drug ever used by humankind. With 2 million deaths a year, hundreds of thousands killed in auto accidents, bar-fighting murders, homelifes destroyed, loss of jobs or opportunities, those imprisoned for violent crimes, those let out of prisons to do violent crimes again, spouse beatings, rape, robberies under the influence, the creation of millions of alcoholics for the breweries profits and their Washington Lobbyists to keep it that way, lawsuits, and hospital costs, binge drinking problems and deaths, and of course, a possible good person undergoing psychopathic changes that ruin his life and many family and friends around him/her. Oh gosh, but it is so much fun....DUH!!! Really??? The next family, including babies you personally witness burned to death in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, tell us how you feel about boozing and its devastating effects on our society and our country. Of course, I hope you never do as your mind will be forever engraved with the horrific scene; but it is a reality each and every minute of the day. I know, I was a traffic officer for many years. And the weak laws put these same killers back on the streets to drive their unguided missiles at another target.Could it be y..?
7 - jawbone
Worldwide alcohol abuse has and will cause more deah and misery than ever war started by madmen, many themselves imbiding the hard stuff. Prohibition in the USA did work and that is why it was repealed. The MAFIA and Joe K., etc., made millions off of their illegal activities of transporting booze to many cities for consumption. Okay, did the highway death count from drunk drivers go down during Prohibition? DWI"s? Hospital and mental ward care? Family violence? You bet it did. We are hooked by "$$$$$$ for Booze." What a shame we can't get high on living a good life; on the supplies of the good earth; on the beauty of nature; on the wonders of life; on nutritious foods, on children and grandchildren; on making society safer. "What in the hell does booze have to do with improving life ? It has everything to do with destroying life.".
8 - Curbside
The worldwide sale of alcohol should be stopped no matter what the cost is to the manufacturer's and the human job loss.Eventually, the hangover would leave most men and women and they just might go on to a better life. Yes we can, it is time for people of all countries to rise up against this most potent of evils and stop the damned carnage. First, though, a catharsis over decades would have to take place in the human psyche. Cigarette smokers in the United States are looked at as not much better than a hardened criminal. How about doing something about the alcohol massacre's that continue unabated?
Imagine no more booze. If John Lennon had not been murdered, I believe as an older person he might have tired of the carnage as much as I.
9 - Evan
some people drink alcohol occasainly some people drink it constanitly and some people should not drink it all