As I’ve recently learned in another post, people should be forced to do things if there is a large benefit to society and to yours and other peoples health. So we should bring back prohibition. According to the CDC (LA Times March 13th, 2014 article) Alcohol use is responsible for 88,000 deaths a year. This does not include injuries from drunk drivers, domestic abuse, sexual assaults, or ruined lives for the drinker and his family, including his children, the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Since this activity (drinking) inflicts much more harm then any benefit, not just to the drinker but others, the people who support drinking are obviously ignorant of the facts and need to be convinced to ban it. At the very least they should be shamed and ridiculed into silence. To be fair, there is some scientific evidence that light drinking (wine seems best) may result in less heart disease, but this small benefit no way makes up for the destructiveness of allowing drinking for the general public. If a Doctor believes it would be useful for his patient, he could always write an Rx for it, with strict monitoring.
Post coming soon: Why we should ban eating meat for the good of society.
While Prohibition did reduce drinking and it’s evil side effects, there were other consequences which were in the end judged to be more harmful than legalized drinking of alcohol. This is called “learning from experience” which some people are determined not to do.
Vaccines are a different issue, unless you want to gets us back to the prohibition era of the 20s, when people still had no access to many vaccines and many did die of what it can be prevented now.
As it turns out I know history, and I usually do look first at the flaws in the argument presented, your facts are misleading by omitting a lot of the context and your past posting shows that you did so on purpose.
So after looking first at your facts it has to be pointed not that you are just an ignoramus. Prohibition was repealed because it was already tried, it was dismissed because it caused much more trouble and death than their well meaning proponents thought it would do.
I disagree with this. For example, I enjoy firing my submachine gun into large crowds of people. Sure, making me stop would provide a large benefit to society, but what about *my *rights?
The casual acceptance of problems stemming from alcohol abuse is indeed troubling. I think our culture’s attitude is slowly improving though. Generations ago, the town drunk was seen as an endearing clown, today they’d be seen as dangerous and pathetic. Still, there’s a lot of work to do.
I’m guessing, though, that this thread isn’t really about alcohol, but about vaccines. Here’s the difference: when it comes to alcohol, I can choose to drink too much, or to not drink at all. I can’t choose whether I get measles or polio and spread it to someone else. Getting and spreading diseases is entirely out of our control. The only way to stop these diseases is either 1) cut off all human contact, or 2) get a vaccine.
Although there had been a strong temperance movement for decades before, the argument has been put forward that Prohibition would never have come to pass if it hadn’t been for one single person; a man who was both an indefatigable advocate of the cause and a genius at forming coalitions of even the most unlikely bedfellows:
No, this thread is about people who believe they can impose their views and actions on other people because they may see it as the greater good (they can even be right). But when you use the same criteria to their vices or sacred cows they get upset and refuse to force the beneficial activities. So far no one has even addressed the number of lives lost by drinking. 88,000. I understand why. It causes them psychological and emotional pain to see their double standard. So they attack the messenger and ignore the message. The other point about prohibition not working, maybe we should have tried to fix why it didn’t work. Laws against many crimes are not that effective and are being broken all the time. Maybe we should just legalize things when people keep doing them.
I feel like you could use a glass of wine. This entire thread doesn’t seem to be about alcohol. If you are upset about something else just say that! Making an inflammatory thread to push your agenda seems passive aggressive.
Prohibition is not about making people do something. It’s about making them not do something.
Vaccination regs are about making people do something.
Perhaps our esteemed OP should go back to the Kindergarten lesson where “yes” and “no” were explained. Or try some Sesame Street episodes, there’s probably several on the subject.