From: bell@cezanne.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Prohibition
Date: 6 Oct 92 16:27:10 GMT
Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Having argued drug prohibition with Kent way back in 1988, and finding
him still showing the same complete lack of logic, I find it much like
trying to teach a pig to sing.  However, I'll both post and e-mail
him, in the vain hope that it might educate anyone who believes him.
And in case you do,  let me highlight this particular paragraph:

>And I certainly don't think the majority of Americans,
>addicted already beyond recovery to a severely addictive
>"substance" of abuse, television, are in any way capable of
>recovering without help from the rest of society, and
>expensive help at that, once severely addicted to anything.

"I'm better than everyone else," huh Kent?

In article <9210052127.AA11638@helium> dolan@nrlmry.navy.mil (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>[...] alcohol, for those not unfortunate enough to be
>genetically predisposed to addiction, is a desperately
>difficult drug with which to achieve physical addiction. It
>takes _years_ of drinking to get physically addicted.

Unsupported assertion, and since you're an advocate of a position and
give us no basis for your belief, the sensible thing for anyone to
do is give your claim no credence  (likewise for any unsupported
claims on my side.)  Since no such gene has been identified, such
a blanket assertion is ludicrous.

The "genetic disposition" evidence is far from convincing.  Some
authorities claim that this particular claim has been championed because
it makes alcoholics feel better about their drinking, that it's not
their fault.  Whether this is true or not I have no basis for judgement,
and neither have you shown any such evidence.

>An acquaintance of mine is a literal rocket scientist, he
>designs the thrusters for the big lifters.  He has been in
>and out of halfway houses, unable to gain and hold employment
>in his field of expertise for years, because of alcoholism.
>Losing even one such trained and valuable person is too many.

PROHIBITION DIDN'T WORK,  remember?

>No, alcoholism, of the acute onset variety, is known to be
>a genetic problem in and of itself.

Evidence?  This is a relatively new and unproven idea.  The convincing
proof would be finding that particular gene is possessed by a large
group of alcoholics and not by a control group of non-alcohol-abusers.
I have not heard of this happening, so unless you have convincing
proof, I don't find it to be a worthwhile argument.

Moreover, even evidence of such a genetic predisposition among some
alcoholics would not prove that people without those genetics can not
become alcoholics quickly if under the types of stresses and such that
cause one to become an alcoholic.

>On the other hand, those who are genericly "addictive
>personalities", whatever exactly that might mean

For example, on the off chance that your assertion is true, whatever
causes those people who aren't genetically predisposed to alcoholism
to drink enough until they do become physically addicted.  I disagree
with the term "addictive personality", however, since environmental
factors are a large part of what makes a drug user become an alcoholic,
be it the stress of wealth and fame for actors and athletes, or the
stress of poverty and inner-city living for addicts from lower class
backgrounds.

>, are probably going to start with alcolhol merely because access
>is easier, and try, and become addicted to, other drugs as
>opportunity allows.

Absolutely.  But it just means they become alcoholics rather than
cocaine or opiate abusers.

>>[My list of people who are mentioned as both alcohol and illicit
>>drug abusers]

>[...] but you have a crowd rigorously selected for wealth,
>notoriety, and other conditions that put them in the stream
>of easy access to expensive drugs

Which is EXACTLY my point!  If you have a group of people who
have free access to both, the ones that have problems with illicit
drugs still have problems with alcohol.  If, as you claim, there
was some random genetics which made people susceptible to abusing
certain kinds of drugs but not others, then there would be more of
them who don't abuse alcohol -- since your claim is there isn't
this high correlation.  I claim the opposite, that there is such
a correlation.

>I've seen people going from alcohol to drugs, drugs to alcohol,

Abusing both along the way?  I don't claim that people won't choose
one particular drug to abuse, I claim that if they had no choice
almost all would go with the only one given.

>drug users that used no alcohol

A vanishingly small percentage according to NIDA.  A few people are
allergic to alcohol, and would go that path.  The fact that people
who have the opportunity to choose the illicit drugs rather than
alcohol choose the other drugs does not mean that they would not
abuse alcohol if the choice of other drugs did not exist.

>and many more alcohol users that used no other drugs.

Not evidence that they wouldn't abuse the other drugs if the other
ones were legal;  price and legality are factors that would make people
choose to use alcohol.

>> Outlawing the other drugs but keeping alcohol legal is like
>> plugging all but one hole in a boat -- it's still going to
>> sink.

>You really, really should think to whom you're writing
>before you spout nonsense like this.

Good point.  (Congrats, you got one.)  How about "is like putting
heat-resistant tiles over almost all of the space shuttle -- it'll
still become space dust..." or "is like dieting by not eating anything
fattening from a selected 3/4ths of the supermarket" or "is like
disarming all but one of the bombs that is going to blow up a building"
or "like shooting down all but one of the incoming ICBMs" or, perhaps
more appropriately, "it's like going after the drug cartels in every
country except Colombia -- where do you think the cartels will be?"

>More to the point, with perhaps 20,000 years of fermented
>beverage use in human history, the boat has _not_ sunk with
>that one leak.

Nor would it with the other drugs.  It's the same leak;  you
have shown little evidence that this is not the case.  The
sole exception is your knowledge of people who abuse other drugs but
not alcohol (with my response as above), but you have given us no
evidence that the vast majority of people who would abuse other drugs
are not already abusing alcohol.  In the absence of evidence of
genetic susceptibilities, people use different kinds of drugs for
much the same reason; escapism.  The government claims that cocaine
use has gone down in the past few years, and that people drinking
to get drunk has gone up by much the same amount.

>We manage to patch and pump fast enough to
>keep that one problem from sinking us, but take a look at
>the absolute costs associated with alcohol use, multiply by
>the essentially unlimited number of new drugs of abuse the
>legalization proponents propose to allow accessible to
>widespread use,

Only an ignorant person or a snow-blind advocate would assert such
multiplication is a realistic way of analyzing the situation.

>> Either outlaw all drugs, including alcohol, or the whole
>> thing is clearly pointless.

>More to the point, the remaining recreational drugs do _not_
>have the high social acceptance and use rate that make
>patching that "alcohol abuse" hole extremely expensive, the
>equivalent of fixing a leak in a ship's plumbing that is in
>a convoluted piping nest.

Actually, alcohol use and abuse, or at least the measurable effects
of it, went way down in the teens (in states with alcohol control laws)
and very early '20s.  By the late 20s, however, they'd jumped back up
again.

>The recreational drugs proposed for legalization have
>none of these qualities that made alcohol prohibition
>difficult, but potentially if in wide use the same high
>social costs _each_

No they don't!  This is the crux of the entire argument, and you have
failed on every level to prove anything of this nature.  Until you
realize that proving this is at the heart of the whole argument,
the rest of your posting is a meaningless noise.  The costs overlap,
since it's almost exclusively the same people having such problems.

>And you cut too binary a choice.  Prohibition on the 1920's
>level is not the only alternative to legalization.

So what alternative do you propose?  I find that half-way measures are
too easily turned back to the old approach by those who would increase
the power of government.

>How I wish you'd taken a realistic, rather than an absolutist
>approach.

I do that for simplicity of argument -- most people are unwilling or
unable to expend the energy to fully analyze the situation at every
level, and adding a variety of alternatives just confuses the issue
too much. Certainly, there is a wide spectrum of possible approaches
to the drug abuse problem, from big-brother crackdowns to complete
government ignoring of the problem.  Some of those intermediate
approaches would be substantially better than the War On some Drugs,
and I would support such changes.  However, there is a danger in those
that they are more easily turned back to the same War on Drugs than is
legalization;  the slippery slope exists there.

>Painting grey in black and white loses so much
>information that your argument is valueless, certainly in the
>simplistic "I want it so it must be good for me" results you
>achieve by your approach.

Kent, I have told you multiple times that I do not drink, smoke, or
otherwise use recreational intoxicants.  I only "want it" in the
sense that I see it as good for me from an expense point of view and
a general civil rights point of view.  I have read copious amounts of
both the literature and relevant statistics, particularly in the latter
case statistics that aren't generated by advocates of either side, and
at every level I've been convinced that legalization is the best approach.
Halfway measures are too easy to turn back to the same insanity.

I paint it in black and white because so few people are willing to look
at a problem beyond that point.

>>   1) Whether the vast majority of people who would have drug
>>      problems have alcohol problems already

>Countered.

Specious counters.  MOREOVER, supposing you are right about drug abuse
being largely genetic susceptibilities, the correct response to the
problem is NOT enforcement, but research into finding those factors
that predispose one to drug abuse and finding treatments based on this.
If we're to spend $10s of billions on the drug problem, THAT's where
the money should go.

>The conclusion is self-indulgent nonsense, based on a skein
>of misdirection and misguided analogy.

Kent, you are an arrogant, misguided, self-deluded person with a near
complete lack of understanding and reason.   Have a nice day.

   -Andrew Bell
bell@cs.unc.edu


Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs