[pstuart]

It also promoted a lot of organized crime. Just like today (but worse, because now we have narco-states vs just gangs.

I lost a mother to alcohol and a brother to heroin. Both are technically quite safe when used appropriately and lethal when not. And they're going to be used regardless of legality, so let's make it safer for those that do as well as stop funding the cartels.

[ak_111]

I am sorry about your loss. However, if you want to talk technically, then the science over the last two decades has moved almost decisively to saying there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

[pstuart]

Yeah, alcohol is not healthy for people. But by safe I'm talking about a glass of wine with dinner or other low intake/healthy contexts.

But my point stands: people are going to do it regardless of the law, so let's stop criminalizing it. Being overweight is unhealthy too, should we arrest every fat person in the country "for their own good"?

[mrguyorama]

I'm not in favor of banning alcohol. I just want to dispel the false notion that prohibition didn't "work", when it empirically did.

We shouldn't ban alcohol because it's a hamfisted way to reduce alcoholism and harms from alcohol abuse. However, the 1910s didn't exactly have functioning rehabilitation programs.

[pstuart]

It might have worked if you squinted right. There was still plenty of alcohol for those of means.

Again, it came at a cost of organized crime. It was not a win.

[LocalH]

We don't really have a functioning rehabilitation program now. The rates of failure and relapse are not exactly low. There are also often a bunch of hoops to jump through to even get access to them, most people are more interested in being "tough on crime" which really means "authoritarian".

[goolz]

Heroin, in a pure form, is non-toxic and as long as you don’t mix it with things and do too much you should be OK. Proper dosing is the huge part. But you could still easily die from slowing your heart down too much so I would not say “safe”. Non-toxic, let’s stick with that.

[throwanem]

There's also no safe level of organized crime.