Alcohol is at the top of the list of objective harm to self and others, right up there with heroin. What "most anyone would consider" is irrelevant to the actual pharmacology of the durg.
Warning - potentially bad take incoming: To me this is actually an argument in favour of the legalization of "hard drugs" more than it is an argument against alcohol. In alcohol we have an addictive, harmful substance that is relatively inexpensive, widely available, heavily advertised and yet most people are able to either abstain or use it in moderation.
Does it really matter what "most" think? From the medical point of view, ethanol is a hard drug. It was actually defined as one in an old USSR government standard, but that definition was dropped later (in the 1970s or thereabouts IIRC).
Yourself and others are missing the point. US law here isn’t “what was considered a hard drug in pre-1970s USSR”. And regardless of what the medical point of view might be, alcohol isn’t classed as a hard drug in US law.
Frankly though, even this straw man argument is moot because it is illegal to sell alcohol without a license too. So regardless of what substance was on sale, this market place was facilitating illegal transactions.
As for whether 40 years is a bit harsh, that’s a lot more subjective. But it doesn’t further the conversation to shift definitions of substances when they’re already legally defined.
No, you're missing the point. We are making a normative claim of what SHOULD be illegal or legal.
The definition of a hard drug has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not. Alcohol is a hard drug by the definition of addictiveness and propensity for harm. When it was made illegal, it didn't reduce use and only increased harms. We learned our lesson and made that hard drug legal in order mitigate the harms of organized crime benefiting from selling it.
Similarly all other illegal drugs should be made legal to reduce the harms of them being illegal and facilitating organized crime that increases violence in communities.
In that regard, the silk road was actually a net good. It reduced gang violence by preventing gangs from competing for physical territory. The US postal service delivering the darknet drugs prevented the gangs from being able to enshrine their Monopoly through violence. This was unequivocally good. Similarly reviews by customers increased quality and purity and reduced tainted drugs, reducing harm to the users. Thus, the silk road was a net social good when measured from a social welfare costs and benefits.
> The definition of a hard drug has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not.
I agree. But there is also a legal definition and we are taking about the law. You can bitch and moan about whether the law is just or not but that’s a different topic.
Which is why you’re missing the point and I wasn’t.
You can argue to you’re blue in the face about what the law should be, but that doesn’t make the law so.