Brains on Drugs: How tinkering with consciousness became a societal sin

Re:Brains on Drugs: How tinkering with consciousness became ... by pstuart on Thursday June 22, 2023 @04:11PM (#36438153)

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"?

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Re:Brains on Drugs: How tinkering with consciousness became ... by mrguyorama on Thursday June 22, 2023 @05:42PM (#36439465)

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.

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Re:Brains on Drugs: How tinkering with consciousness became ... by pstuart on Friday June 23, 2023 @01:07PM (#36449611)

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.

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Re:Brains on Drugs: How tinkering with consciousness became ... by LocalH on Saturday June 24, 2023 @10:45AM (#36459096)

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".

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