By contrast with any of the controlled drugs, alcohol use is neither statistically nor legally deviant.
In particular, those who discuss drug policy (outside Islamic societies) have no obligation to pretend they themselves are — nor any right to assume that their audiences are — abstinent from alcohol. Thus courtesy forbids even those who themselves do not drink and disapprove of drinking from referring to alcohol users generically as “drunkards” or “degenerates” or “slaves of the Demon Rum.” Problems with alcohol must therefore be treated, in Abraham Lincoln's formulation, as “the abuse of a good thing,” not “the use of a bad thing.”
If alcohol is a drug, then drug use is normal, and not all drug use is abuse. That undercuts the entire project of stigmatization underlying much of what passes for drug abuse prevention. If smoking cannabis, snorting cocaine, swallowing MDMA (ecstasy), or even injecting heroin are not different in principle from having a glass of wine, then the moral basis for treating cannabis-smokers, cocaine-snorters, rave-goers, and heroin-injectors as carriers of a deadly plague is called into question, and even suppliers of those drugs might be seen as regulatory violators rather than hostes humani generic (enemies of humankind), the modern incarnation of a legal category that used to cover pirates and slave-traders.
Conversely, labeling alcohol a “drug,” given the nasty connotations that word has been so carefully given, calls into question the presumptive innocence and innocuousness of drinking by responsible, non-alcoholic adults, and of the industry that supplies them, as it also supplies children, alcoholics, and those who become violent and imprudent under the influence of drink. To the analytically minded it seems perverse that the one-eighth or so of diagnosable substance abuse disorder (other than nicotine dependency) that relates to the controlled drugs should receive much more attention (whether measured by rhetoric or control resources) than the seven-eighths in which the problem substance is alcohol.
Back when the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy (the “drug czar’s” office) was new, I had a conversation with someone who was then a staffer and is now a senior official. When I suggested the office ought to include alcohol among its targets, he fairly snarled, “Don’t change the subject!” Someone of a psychodynamic or cultural-critical turn of mind might be inclined to turn that response around and consider the current social and political formulation of the drug problem as a massive displacement mechanism, an effort to “change the subject” from the one drug that claims the majority of the addicts and accounts for the vast bulk of drug-related deaths and drug-related violence.
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