What I read
According to Alex Therrien in "Regular excess drinking can take years off your life, study finds" (2018), the popular belief among red wine users that their chosen drug is good for their hearts is false, since the minor benefits of drinking alcohol are "swamped by the increased risk of" more deadly heart disease. Therrien says that a large international study of 600,000 people over 19 countries confirms that more than about one glass of wine or equivalent daily has a negative health impact that quickly begins to shorten the drinker's life span.
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My response
The findings that Therrien reports did not surprise me, since it has long been known that the addictive drug alcohol is more harmful than most illegal drugs. But what made this report interesting is the large size of the study and that it was not restricted to a single country. There is little doubt that as drugs go, alcohol is one of the most dangerous, both for users and for society. Naturally, this tells us that the drug laws of most nations, including my own, are not only irrational in their rejection of the solid factual evidence, but seriously immoral in their unequal treatment of different drugs.
If the reason for making a drug illegal is that it harms the user, then all those people who drink beer, red wine, champagne and other forms of alcohol should be treated exactly the same as marijuana or yaa baa users. At this point, I should confess that I'm one of the people who use the drug alcohol: I enjoy a glass of red wine over a meal with family or friends. My family is of Italian ancestry, and when my great grandparents left Italy about 140 years ago, they brought grape vines to Australia with them so that they could make red wine just like back home. And family still has cutting growing from those same vines, although we don't make our own wine these days.
Actually, I think that social enjoyment is a good reason to drink wine. I don't go to pubs and drink beer, but obviously many people do enjoy that, and provided they don't then try to drive home, it seems to me that their pleasure is a good reason to enjoy the drug, but exactly the same is true of other drugs: if young people go to a dance party and use ecstasy or marijuana or whatever other drug is popular, including cocaine, which is a popular party drug, that is an equally good reason for using the drug as drinking beer in pub or red wine with dinner, or champagne at a wedding.
Unfortunately, not all drugs are equal, and whilst alcohol is only about number three in the harm it causes to its users (heroin and methamphetamine are both more harmful to their users), alcohol is much worse in the harm it causes to society and to other people. This is obvious in Thailand where the annual deaths on the roads every Songkran and New Year often involve the drug alcohol. Alcohol is also a stimulant to violence, which is why it is commonly implicated in rape, public fights, and domestic violence where fathers or mothers get drunk and then beat up their kids or spouse. Heroin is the most harmful drug to the user, but at least heroin users don't usually hurt other people much: they just fall asleep, sometimes forever.
I will continue to enjoy my occasional glass or two of red wine, but I think that other people should also be allowed to enjoy their preferred drugs, even if there is some danger to themselves in doing that. My own alcohol use is so low it probably isn't any danger according to the research, but clearly many people in Australia, Thailand and other countries regularly use alcohol at levels that are dangerous to them, although to be honest, a one or two year reduction in life might seem a reasonable price to pay for a lot of enjoyment during the decades before death. I think adults should be allowed to make that decision for themselves.
I can't think if any reason that makes the insane drug laws of my own and other countries morally right. To put someone in prison merely because she smoked marijuana or took a yaa baa pill seems like seriously bad morals to me. But perhaps someone can suggest a reason I have not thought of that does justify the seemingly mad drug policies that many countries are addicted to.
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| No, it isn't good for your health even in small amounts! |
Actually, I think that social enjoyment is a good reason to drink wine. I don't go to pubs and drink beer, but obviously many people do enjoy that, and provided they don't then try to drive home, it seems to me that their pleasure is a good reason to enjoy the drug, but exactly the same is true of other drugs: if young people go to a dance party and use ecstasy or marijuana or whatever other drug is popular, including cocaine, which is a popular party drug, that is an equally good reason for using the drug as drinking beer in pub or red wine with dinner, or champagne at a wedding.
Unfortunately, not all drugs are equal, and whilst alcohol is only about number three in the harm it causes to its users (heroin and methamphetamine are both more harmful to their users), alcohol is much worse in the harm it causes to society and to other people. This is obvious in Thailand where the annual deaths on the roads every Songkran and New Year often involve the drug alcohol. Alcohol is also a stimulant to violence, which is why it is commonly implicated in rape, public fights, and domestic violence where fathers or mothers get drunk and then beat up their kids or spouse. Heroin is the most harmful drug to the user, but at least heroin users don't usually hurt other people much: they just fall asleep, sometimes forever.
I will continue to enjoy my occasional glass or two of red wine, but I think that other people should also be allowed to enjoy their preferred drugs, even if there is some danger to themselves in doing that. My own alcohol use is so low it probably isn't any danger according to the research, but clearly many people in Australia, Thailand and other countries regularly use alcohol at levels that are dangerous to them, although to be honest, a one or two year reduction in life might seem a reasonable price to pay for a lot of enjoyment during the decades before death. I think adults should be allowed to make that decision for themselves.
I can't think if any reason that makes the insane drug laws of my own and other countries morally right. To put someone in prison merely because she smoked marijuana or took a yaa baa pill seems like seriously bad morals to me. But perhaps someone can suggest a reason I have not thought of that does justify the seemingly mad drug policies that many countries are addicted to.
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My question
Should the sale and use of all popular drugs be legalized in your country?
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Reference
- Therrien, A. (2018, April 13). Regular excess drinking can take years off your life, study finds. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43738644
In your answers to my question about how long it might take you to write a similar blog post, there was considerable variation last night.
ReplyDeleteFor this one, I set a timer as soon as I had chosen my article to blog. Until I hit the orange "Publish" button took 36 minutes and 42 seconds, which is about right. I can sometimes do it in about 20 minutes, but 30 to 40 minutes is usual. My guess is that it will take you at least on hour to write your first blog post responding to something in the news. But don't worry, you will get faster with practice, which is why this will be a weekly writing assignment.
And Boom asked a thoughtful question about the length of the response. I also had that in mind as I wrote the post above. And if I have time, I'll write another, quicker, one before our class this morning. I am a bit worried that my response sounds too much like an essay, even if it is not a formal academic essay – that was an accident in this case.
Finally, my summary in "What I read" is only 92 words, which is excellent.
And now it's your turn to respond in a comment. You can respond to answer the specific question that I've asked, or you can write down any other response that comes into your mind.
My question to respond to here is a Yes/No question, but when you respond, it would not be the best strategy to simply write "Yes" or "No." You should write for five to ten minutes as we have been practising. The question is only a prompt to start you thinking.
ReplyDeleteI, myself like drinking wine because I have been living in western society for long time so I don’t think wine will be very bad for us if we don’t drink too much. But according to this research I have to change my drinking habit. I might drink less or none of wine or any alcohol.
ReplyDeleteAs I have known, the alcohol causes many problems such as driving accident, health problems like a liver cancer, family relationships, money expense, etc.
However, alcohol is still popular thing for the party around the world.
I think nowadays if we need to stop people to drink it will be harder because there are more people reach to the alcohol.
So the most dangerous from drinking alcohol is driving. I never drive after drunk and I hope I will not get killed from drunken people.
The last time i ever drove a car was about 30 years ago when a friend I was with at a party in sydney decided she was too drunk to drive her own car home, so she sensibly asked me to. I didn't think I was a very good driver, but I was probably better able to control her car than she was, so I agreed.
DeleteThese days I don't even have a driver's licence any more, and would not think of trying to drive anything, although I suppose I probably still can. I'm a great lover of public transportation.