I encourage you to actually do some research on alcoholism - both the number of people it affects as well as the way it prevents itself. You're dangerously uninformed on the topic to be presenting these kinds of opinions.
oh, come on! I think you're right on this issue, but since when are opinions dangerous? He's giving his honest opinion of the issue according to his experience.
You will be much more effective if you simply try to enjoy the conversation than trying to call out people for having "dangerous opinions".
You put quotes around "dangerous opinions" - you're wrong to do that, because I never used that phrase. I said he was dangerously uninformed.
There are times when people can have valid, personal opinions and times when there's just objective reality. Some people these days say that their opinion is that the 2020 election was stolen. That's not a valid opinion - it's just wrong. Saying that hangovers make alcohol self-regulating when >10M people in the US are alcoholics (for whom it is, as a point of fact, untrue that alcohol is a self-regulating substance) is not a valid opinion - it's a misunderstanding of reality.
As someone who knows people who have been very severely negatively affected by alcoholism, I do not enjoy conversations with people who make points about alcohol that are totally uninformed and suggest that we should base policy around those uninformed thoughts.
I just think you would enjoy the conversation more if your experience was not dependent on someone else's opinion. You are also assuming something about another person that is more than likely untrue. Sounds like a horrible way to live.
No offense to you, but who named you the arbitrator of "valid opinions"? I doubt you are that arrogant in person, but you sure are coming off that way.
Most =/ all. For some it doesn’t work this way and that is very costly to us all. Hence the great deal of damage that it causes. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make, is alcohol too dangerous therefore we must legalize more drugs?
The point is that we should have a coherent policy in the US around how we treat drugs.
Either we should accept a certain threshold of danger around drug use and allow all drugs under that threshold to be used (with appropriate regulation), or we should not accept the use of dangerous drugs and should outlaw them.
Right now, US drug policy is that a fairly dangerous drug (alcohol) is not legal, while other clearly less dangerous drugs (marijuana, most hallucinogens, MDMA, etc.) are not legal. It should be changed to be a rational policy in which everything less dangerous than alcohol is legal or a policy in which alcohol is not legal.
If anything I think perhaps reducing the legal age for drinking in the US. Where I’m from getting black out drunk is considered immature and people are expected to grow out of it, but then we start a lot earlier. Plus we learn how to handle alcohol * before we learn how to drive so it’s not considered matcho to drink and drive. I think cigarette companies like the 3 year gap of being able to buy cigarettes but not alcohol.
I’m pretty pro legalization, I think it’s probably best handled at the cultural level, but until society matures there is going to a fair bit of collateral damage and I think we should be honest about that.
* it’s a generalization… obviously it doesn’t work out this way for everyone.
You will be much more effective if you simply try to enjoy the conversation than trying to call out people for having "dangerous opinions".