Should beer be illegal?

[ub3rman123]

I don't think it'd even possible to make it illegal. Prohibition was a great example of it. People got rich brewing their own. Meanwhile, what happens if there simply isn't any available? This happened in Russia a few times. Citizens started drinking shoe polish and cologne just for a bit of drunkenness. I get the feeling that alcohol is here to stay.

[grannywils]

The solution is not in making beer or alcohol illegal, but rather to make it so that all types of beer and most things containing alcohol taste rather badly... Unfortunately, this solution too has had entirely the opposite effect. A man would drink month old (fresh off the foot) gym-socks, pureed of course, if he was under the impression that it had the possibility of getting him totally shitfaced soon after, and might, after repeated consumption, be inclined to try the version of the drink simply for the flavor of it. Non-alcoholic beer is a good example of this dynamic.

 

Vagrant0: You make me laugh; and that's a good thing. :biggrin: And I still cannot understand it, but I pretty much agree with you yet again. :thumbsup:

 

My husband died from alcohol abuse, and I can assure you that banning beer would not have prevented it.

[Keanumoreira]

The solution is not in making beer or alcohol illegal, but rather to make it so that all types of beer and most things containing alcohol taste rather badly... Unfortunately, this solution too has had entirely the opposite effect. A man would drink month old (fresh off the foot) gym-socks, pureed of course, if he was under the impression that it had the possibility of getting him totally shitfaced soon after, and might, after repeated consumption, be inclined to try the version of the drink simply for the flavor of it. Non-alcoholic beer is a good example of this dynamic.

 

Vagrant0: You make me laugh; and that's a good thing. :biggrin: And I still cannot understand it, but I pretty much agree with you yet again. :thumbsup:

 

My husband died from alcohol abuse, and I can assure you that banning beer would not have prevented it.

 

Your husband died off Alcohol abuse? I'm sorry for your loss, another good reason why beer in my opinion should be illegal. (Sigh.) If only humans weren't a stubborn species.

[SpellAndShield]

The bottom line is that no form of prohibition works, be it drugs, alcohol, whatever...in a free society, people are free to make choices and suffer the good or bad consequences of those choices...you cannot 'legislate morality' (whatever that means).

[Keanumoreira]

The bottom line is that new form of prohibition works, be it drugs, alcohol, whatever...in a free society, people are free to make choices and suffer the good or bad consequences of those choices...you cannot 'legislate morality' (whatever that means).

 

I don't know about that Stardusk, even if a democracy is strong, like America's, if the conditions are right, the goverment will have to make choices against what it stands for. Prohibition did this, and it has recently occured in New York America where a new set of food laws, approved by Congress, are underway that violates the constitution but was approved anyway for the good of the people. If beer becomes such a major problem, prohibition will return, no matter what the constitution says, because if a Nation NEEDS to do it, they will to perserve their freedom.

[Aurielius]

I don't know about that Stardusk, even if a democracy is strong, like America's, if the conditions are right, the goverment will have to make choices against what it stands for. Prohibition did this, and it has recently occured in New York America where a new set of food laws, approved by Congress, are underway that violates the constitution but was approved anyway for the good of the people. If beer becomes such a major problem, prohibition will return, no matter what the constitution says, because if a Nation NEEDS to do it, they will to perserve their freedom.

Prohibition was an abysmal failure, the only thing it achieved was the founding of criminal dynasties. You casually dismiss the Constitution, which to American is the basis of our governmental ideology, I do not think you understand the import that we attach to it. It is not some subsidiary document to be bypassed at a reformers convenience, it is the corner stone of our republic.Trying to legislate virtue has never worked and further more I like my freedoms free of moralistic intercession ' for my own good'. By the way the food and drug act to which you refer was not unconstitutional , or at least that was the opinion of the Supreme Court.

[Trandoshan]

Prohibition did nothing but increase demand, and decrease supply to zero. The decrease of supply to zero based on any legislation (This applies to weed too!) will always cause an increase of criminal activity caused by an incredible increase of demand. Like you said, prohibition caused the rise of the Mafia in America. It stopped the free market from marketing a certain product, and jammed the demand through the roof. Since the supplier could not be one of our fine institutions, it fell under the hands of those who would break the law. As you can probably guess, a High demand of a product can make the seller very wealthy. If the seller is selling an illegal substance with a high amount of demand, that seller can make a very pretty penny. The same holds for weed, and if beer happens to become Illegal again, the same will happen again.

 

Besides, look at the current tax on Alchohol! Our (American) goverment makes a pretty penny off of beer anyways. Banning beer will only increase our ghastly national debt.

 

I'm bringing up the economics of beer. I believe it is the greatest ramification of banning beer. That's an opinion FYI.

[Maxwell the Fool]

a healthy effects in drink low quantity of alcoholics, specially Wine, mainly helps to control cholesterol, it's a good diuretic among other thing ( research in the scientific American magazine website and you'll find these researches.

 

The same helpful effects our found when drinking grape juice. It is the sweetening process undergone by grapes which causes the health effects.

 

@Stardusk: Sure you can. Did you know that in the Phillipenes the slightest suspicion of you being involved with drugs will get you a serious case of speed-of-sound led poisoning? Guess why? Because it works. Kill people for committing a crime, and the frequency of that crime goes down. If we just killed anyone who committed any crime, all of our problems would be solved.

 

EX: Texas. Texas has the highest usage of the death penalty of any state. It also happens to have the lowest occurrence of crimes demanding the death penalty, even though it's (unless it's gone up) the third most populous state.

[evilneko]

Making alcohol--and I'll assume you meant alcohol in general, and not just beer--illegal won't solve anything, for reasons already mentioned previously. This is not to mention the fact that it'd be political suicide to even propose re-enacting Prohibition. (Though, with the way the Republican party's been destroying itself lately it wouldn't be surprising, heck it might be fun to see 'em go out with a bang like that, and heck, for once you'd have CNN, Fox, and MSNBC all on the same side! But I digress) And even if it were proposed, it'd likely take a constitutional amendment to do it and that would give it a snowball's chance in hell of ever passing.

 

It's like guns. The vast majority of gun owners are responsible and safe, or at least reasonably so. Just because a small minority aren't doesn't mean they should be banned for everyone. To risk going into Reductio ad absurdum territory: would you ban automobiles because some people blow them up or use them to run people down? And let's not forget accidents. After all, far more people die on our roads than in any war.

 

You'd have a far better case for making smoking illegal, at least in public. There's no such thing as second-hand alcohol after all. When a person drinks, he hurts no one (medically speaking) but himself. Smoke on the other hand goes into the air where others around the smoker might inhale it and incur some small harm.

 

EX: Texas. Texas has the highest usage of the death penalty of any state. It also happens to have the lowest occurrence of crimes demanding the death penalty*

 

* [citation needed]

 

....because that simply isn't what the data show.

[dthumb]

 

@Stardusk: Sure you can. Did you know that in the Phillipenes the slightest suspicion of you being involved with drugs will get you a serious case of speed-of-sound led poisoning? Guess why? Because it works. Kill people for committing a crime, and the frequency of that crime goes down. If we just killed anyone who committed any crime, all of our problems would be solved.

 

 

I've been accused of using drugs (I'm fine with cigarettes and a bit of beer), I'm not dead. But if you're a multiple offense smalltime dealer/user, then it's only a matter of time. No one usually touches the Big Fish, either too slippery or too many powerful friends.