[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".