Why the unfounded distinction between drink and drugs in our society

dttq

Before I begin, I've nothing against booze, and enjoy a sip myself. However if there's one thing that bothers me is this society which is so tolerant of alcohol and yet views drugs as been dangerous, addictive, life altering etc.

Hold the phone all you un-informed ( the Joe Duffy brigade and Legion of Mary crowd in particular) persons, alcohol is also not only considered a drug, but is officially classed as a drug. It is a psychoactive, mind altering substance in liquid, drinkable form and readily available just about anywhere. It is considered to be a fairly dangerous substance, behind only heroin and crack in its damaging effects on the person.

And yet it's so accepted in our society that we don't see it for the drug it is. It never ceases to annoy me of our lax attitude "just having a p!ssup" attitude toward alcohol, whilst demonising drugs, including safer-than-alcohol substances such as cannabis.

What will it take to get through to the majoritarian, faux moralist brigade outt there that we already have one of the most dangerous (and legal) substances on the face of the earth, and yet we imprison otherwise law-abiding users of non-alcoholic drinks, destroying their reputation and future advancements, while the other druggies........sorry I meant p!ssheads get to use their drug of choice without fear of imprisonment, even if they fight with every second fella in the nightclub and p!ss and puke in half of our city, town and village streets during.after hours.

Of yeah and alcoholic = "shure he likes a drink now and then, leave him be"

And drug user =scum of the earth, lock em up and throw away the keys...........protect the children......rabble rabble rabble

Dodge

Because the drinsk industry provdes thousands of tax paying jobs and nobody in establishment wants to piss them off

but then you knew that

keith16

dttq wrote: »

and yet we imprison otherwise law-abiding users of non-alcoholic drinks,

Thanks, this gave me a good laugh!

Larbre34

1) excise

2) Its ok for the parish priest to be a p!sshead.

kneemos

Alcohol numbs the masses,that's why it didn't get a big price increase in the budget.

AnonoBoy

Alcohol's not a drug, it's a drink.

In before someone posts a Bill Hicks video.

AnonoBoy

kneemos wrote: »

Alcohol numbs the masses.

That's flouride you're thinking of. Well according to this thread it is anyways.

shanered

It just annoys me more that people cant come around to he idea of taxing cannavis to bits similar yo alchohol and make a few more quid so thing like the recently cut carers allowence and such could remain. There is serious money to be made with weed and all the weed tourisim such as amsterdam would be great, and id say and food outlets would be delighted with everyone having the munchies.
Yes its a pity about the stigma, hopefully people come around eventually.

jimmycrackcorm

Because it's too late for alcohol which had been embedded in society for centuries.

TwoShedsJackson

Taxes and jobs.

The_Minister

You can make alcohol in a bathtub from rotting fruit.

rubadub

rubadub wrote: »

These are typical views people have, skewed by the media. Many people have a real problem accepting that people could possibly enjoy illegal recreational drugs in a controlled manner, yet have NO problem accepting that mammy can have 1 glass of wine with her sunday lunch and enjoy a light buzz. And my God, mammy does not turn into a depraved degenerate wino even though alcohol is recognized as an addictive recreational drug. I know many people who take illegal drugs at threshold doses, just like people can have 2 pints watching football without getting liver disease, dying of alcohol overdose, or starting a fight on the way home. Many people sitting around you in your local are probably on other drugs, just at low enough doses that is is not obvious. So people see a gurning idiot and say "whats he on", "oh E", and then goes off thinking every person on E does it to that extent, yet can accept not every drinker is strewn out on the street covered in puke...



The acceptability is mainly down to the legality though. Alcohol is not legal because it is socially acceptable, it is socially acceptable because it is legal. Many will go to holland and smoke a joint no problem, but would not even dream of doing it here. People have grown up with alcohol being used so think it the norm, many would not even consider it a drug, and many cigarette and alcohol users take great offence at being called "drug users"

If alcohol was illegal, it would be portrayed in a very different light. They would call it "kids drinking industrial degreaser", just like they call ketamine "horse tranquiliser", while its medicinally used for kids! And "rat poison", was medicinally used as a stimulant in humans. The propaganda would have you believe all alcohol users will become addicts, winos on the street, destroyed liver, beating their wives & friends, losing their jobs, falling about injuring themselves. If alcohol was illegal many would think the concept of mammy having a single sherry at xmas ludicrous, just like many fail to accept somebody could enjoy minimal doses of illegal recreational drugs.


Some interesting reading here http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pharmacotheon/pharmacotheon.shtml with theories on why many in society are so scared of people being allowed experience altered states of conciousness, a basic urge like sex and hunger. And like sex & hunger some have a high drive to experience alter states, and those with low drives simply do not "get it", so see no point to it, and strongly oppose it.

If you want to look at legalisation & legitimate sources just look back in history. Drug prohibition is a very recent concept, before they were illegal, they were legal, many cannot get their head around that. In Dublin cocaine was once freely available in pharmacies over the counter, fully legal and very widely used. Many do not even know this was the case!

.

gallag

The_Minister wrote: »

You can make alcohol in a bathtub from rotting fruit.

You can grow weed in your garden.

franktheplank

Mmmm Drugs r bad m'kay

Adhamh

Beer is a culinary thing which gets abused.

Let's put it this way: nobody's ever done a line of coke for the flavour.

gallag

Adhamh wrote: »

Beer is a culinary thing which gets abused.

Let's put it this way: nobody's ever done a line of coke for the flavour.

Like weed, some plants are really nice but others (am looking at you orange bud) can be stinking.

Chucken

Here are a few interesting facts about drugs and alcohol in history.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/drg09.htm

kissthesky

Rubadub has posted a great post on alcohol and the psychology behind it and the link he put up is a lot of reading and puts a whole spectrum of drug use in relation to each other. Well worth a read.
So, my comment for what its worth. After spending 25 yrs in the pub/nightclub/afterhours sheebeen scene , I agree that there is a massive gulf between drink and drugs. People do forget that drink for a lot of people is very destructive. Over the years I have given lads I know money to cover their rent/bills etc. To be honest I felt like a drug dealer and the reality is I was no better than someone handing out money to customers who fell on hard times due to their dependence on drugs. You can dress up other drugs all you like. But drink is a drug and I now make no distinction between heroin use and alcohol.
Both drugs have the ability to make the user want more to the detriment of themselves and those around them. For me, I am no longer in the pub trade. Morally , I reached the conclusion that I was in the drug trade, albeit, a legal drug trade. Is there any difference between Joe who spends his last cent on drink or Joe who spends his last cent on heroin/speed/etc.
I hated dole day because that meant that the nicest, soundest, salt of the earth lads would come in and for two days, get some relief from the **** that was goin on in their lives. I ended up feeling like a parasite taking their money because I had to pay the rent, staff, bills etc.
Now if they spent 5 euros on an E and a smoke. Well then that’s another story. A lot of greedy/publicans will spit on someone who takes an E and ignore the fact that they spent 10 times as much in his pub on beer and ended up going home, getting sick and kicking the head off their girlfriend.
The question is this. Is their a load of hypocrisy in the legal vs illegal drugs argument? Of course there is. For me, I would rather someone pops an E and is 99% fine with it than see another 'druggie' ( ah sure , he likes a few pints ) spent a load of money basically ingesting a socially acceptable drug, aka drink.
If you are an alcoholic and drink the farm, then you are a character who likes the odd drink. But if you look after the farm and take the odd E and bit of whizz once in a blue moon……………….you are demonised as a druggie. In my opinion, both people are taking drugs except one is socially acceptable and the other isn’t.
I hope that posters keep this thread going because there is a huge amount of bull**** about this. As a now EX publican, I would rate drink/alcohol as way more potent and destructive than drugs.
This whole attitude to drink is wrong. Can you imagine the headlines in a rural newspaper. Ted had too much to drink and drove home and crashed into another driver on his way home. Wrote off his car , lost his job, injured the other driver, assaulted his wife when he got home, cant drive due to a ban for 3 years and is thumbing to the nearest pub every morning to get a drink. But the locals will say that Ted is a bit of a wild one alright.
Compare that to Joe who doesn’t drink and takes an e every now and then and goes home happy. Happy, but labelled a druggie by the same community that has condoned drink driving and domestic violence.
Anyway that’s my aul 2 cents or 3 fiddy in todays currency.

kissthesky

I said earlier that I rate alcohol more potent THAN other drugs. I meant to say that I rate alcohol as potent as any other drug.

Kold

Of all the drugs I've taken, alcohol is the one where I've ended up in the most dangerous states.

greenheart

I reckon alcoholism is worse than any other addiction. When someone is trying to beat drug addiction they can take themselves out of the scene and try to break away from any routine/habits they have.
With alcoholism there is a pub, off -licence on nearly every street in Ireland, they go to the shop for milk and it's there. It's widely accepted by people so there is more temptation and it's harder to break away from.
Addiction is such a curse, have A LOT of respect for people who manage to free themselves from it.

frag420

Adhamh wrote: »

Beer is a culinary thing which gets abused.

Let's put it this way: nobody's ever done a line of coke for the flavour.

In sure they enjoyed the smell though!!

humanji

One of these days I'll open one of these threads and find something new. Not today though. Not today.

Scortho

Alcohol is legal. Drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and canabis are not.

As one famous economist said "I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."

Ask yourself this, When was the last time someone got killed over the sale of alcohol or cigarettes?

Wattle

Ah here lads the drink don't be denigrating the drink. It's part of who we are and divil a bit of harm its ever done us.

Wattle

Scortho wrote: »

Alcohol is legal. Drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and canabis are not.

As one famous economist said "I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."

Ask yourself this, When was the last time someone got killed over the sale of alcohol or cigarettes?

For straters there's a huge trade in illegal cigarettes run by some pretty nefarious people. I don't think they'd think twice about killing someone who crossed them.

BraziliaNZ

The thing is, if drugs like cocaine etc were more available, people would be doing a lot more of it. Booze causes problems as is, but would adding cocaine etc to the mix help things? I doubt it.
I lived across the road from a coke dealer once, having that sort of availability was not a good thing for me. Some of us are better off not having these temptations.
So it's a tough one to call, a lot of people don't need this stuff available. Everyone was doing mephedrone when it was legal and availabe from hatches at 5am - was that a good thing? I believe in free will etc, but maybe governments need to nanny the masses to a certain extent with these things? Do they?

Scortho

Wattle wrote: »

For straters there's a huge trade in illegal cigarettes run by some pretty nefarious people. I don't think they'd think twice about killing someone who crossed them.

I was talkin about the legal trade!

thebigbiffo

Scortho wrote: »

Ask yourself this, When was the last time someone got killed over the sale of alcohol or cigarettes?

:eek:



:rolleyes:



Shocked, confused, incredulous and saddened that in this day and age someone with access to any amount of information on the subject can spew such complete b'ollix.

I, too, am starting to hate these threads. Makes me angry at humanity and the amount of witless people in the world.

BraziliaNZ

Also, from what we learned from Headshopgate a few years ago, it seems like the majority of Irish people are narrow minded "concerned" aulones that ring Joe Duffy etc. They would never allow legalisation to happen, and no politician in his right mind would have it as a policy as he'd lose the vote of all these idiots.
That Ming guy did the whole culchie fixing things for the locals routine to get voted in, it made them forget about his views on cannabis.

BensonSlide

I hate making a distinction between the two. You get the usual moral brigade going 'oh, you shouldn't mix gargle with drugs'. Screw that. Get a feast of pints down the gullet, couple of Jimmy Hill's to get you over the midnight slump, keep the night going with some Moon Rocks, then watch the sun rise after taking a metric shítload of boxos.

Wattle

Scortho wrote: »

I was talkin about the legal trade!

The legal trade in alcohol and cigarettes kills many more times people every year than illegal drugs do.

seven_eleven

There's this girl in my class who comes in every single morning about an hour late hungover, she drinks every single night. She looks so unwashed and dirty every morning, coupled with the fact that she's late is quite annoying. She even puked all over the place one day and laughed it off as being normal.
Infact most of the class view it as normal. What the hell is wrong with some people?

Iwannahurl

seven_eleven wrote: »

What the hell is wrong with some people?

Alcohol.

Kev_2012

I really can't understand this comparison. I hate being around stoned people. That said, I hate being around drunk people unless I'm drinking too, but any time I was around people smoking, they were always spaced out of it, talking absolute bollocks. If you have 7-8 pints, you'll be just merry and getting a laugh.

There doesn't seem to be a level of "stonedness" let's say that people's brain aren't completely gone to mush.

And another thing, smoke is f*cking horrible!!!

Wattle

People take absolute bollocks when drunk too.

laoch na mona

no one cut down the rainforest to make whiskey

Iwannahurl

Wattle wrote: »

People take absolute bollocks when drunk too.

Some people don't even wait that long...

Ray Palmer

rubadub wrote: »

If you want to look at legalisation & legitimate sources just look back in history. Drug prohibition is a very recent concept, before they were illegal, they were legal, many cannot get their head around that. In Dublin cocaine was once freely available in pharmacies over the counter, fully legal and very widely used. Many do not even know this was the case!

Yes you could get it quite easily. They even recommended opium for babies to keep the quite. My own grandfather died of morphine use. He had an infection and the doctors over prescribed morphine. He used to visit all the chemists from Dublin to Longford to get it. They knew it was a danger hence chemists would not give it out in large quantity.
Things like the opium wars also lead to international restrictions.
I am all for legalisation of certain drugs but not all. It has to be said that drugs are getting more harmful due to prohibition. Meth and crack would probably not exist if it wasn't for prohibition. Certain street gangs in the us are a direct result of harsh punishments for cannabis.

Ray Palmer

laoch na mona wrote: »

no one cut down the rainforest to make whiskey

They did cut down oak forests to grow grain and make barrels. Just because it wasn't recent doesn't make it better. It is part of the reason we need the rain forests

aaronjumper

Nobody has ever tried to mug me for booze money.
People have however tried to mug me for drug money.

rubadub

aaronjumper wrote: »

Nobody has ever tried to mug me for booze money.
People have however tried to mug me for drug money.

Really? you questioned what the thiefs were going to spend your money on?

I have heard odd irrational statments like this before. Most people drink therefore I would think its a fairly obvious possibility that criminals might spend some of their money on alcohol, or cigarettes, coffee, computer games etc...

I would guess a higher proportion of scumbags drink than are teetotal, so even more likely.

The thing is so many people have this irrational double standard for some drugs that lawyers will use it as a defence. So they will plead to a judge and/or jury that their defendant is a poor defenceless addict who has no control over their actions -and the suckers lap it up. While if he told the truth and said he robbed to get his kid a PS3, or a tray of heineken they would laugh at that as an excuse and throw the book at them. I knew a foaf caught with heroin and they said to claim he was an addict, he had to go to rehab after rather than jail, he was not a user.

aaronjumper

rubadub wrote: »

Really? you questioned what the thiefs were going to spend your money on?

I have heard odd irrational statments like this before. Most people drink therefore I would think its a fairly obvious possibility that criminals might spend some of their money on alcohol, or cigarettes, coffee, computer games etc...

I would guess a higher proportion of scumbags drink than are teetotal, so even more likely.

No it was the fact he dropped a needle on the ground.
You seem to be the one making odd statements.

The_Gatsby

I think the graph shown in this link says it all. Alcohol is dangerous, as are many other drugs, but at the end of the it's socially acceptable and that will never change. People hear horror stories about drugs and think "Oh that's why they're illegal, they make you do that" but anybody hearing a bad story related to drink and they think "He just couldn't handle his drink". In other words, because alcohol is legal, it must be safe enough.

It's the Joe Duffy listeners of this world that have this sort of opinion and as long as Joe Duffy is still living, nothing will ever change.

rubadub

aaronjumper wrote: »

No it was the fact he dropped a needle on the ground.
You seem to be the one making odd statements.

Which of my statments did you find odd, maybe I can clarify them.

I expect needles are commonly used by non-addict, non-injectable drug using muggers. It strikes fear into victims and gets the sympathy card in court due to the associated presumption of them being a victim themselves, good weapon of choice IMO. Nice & cheap weapon too which they can easily discard after the crime, like you hear of expensive guns being ditched.

mikom

aaronjumper wrote: »

No it was the fact he dropped a needle on the ground.
You seem to be the one making odd statements.

Could have been a diabetic alcoholic..... or a gramophone enthusiast..... a cross-stitcher possibly....

aaronjumper

rubadub wrote: »

Which of my statments did you find odd, maybe I can clarify them.

I expect needles are commonly used by non-addict, non-injectable drug using muggers. It strikes fear into victims and gets the sympathy card in court due to the associated presumption of them being a victim themselves, good weapon of choice IMO. Nice & cheap weapon too which they can easily discard after the crime, like you hear of expensive guns being ditched.

That you would call my post irrational an odd.

I have friends that drink too much and I used to have friends that used too much. You learn to see the signs of each. If you want to disagree with me then that is your opinion and thats fine. Calling someone odd and irrational for having them is a bit strong though. Also didnt use the needle as a weapon.

I also dont have a double standard, booze just happens to be my chosen poison. I dont look down on those who use just stay away from it.
In my experience though low level crime seems to happen so that the guilty can support their drug habit. Have rarely heard of it happening to fund drinking habits.

As I have already said though that is my experience.

Wattle

aaronjumper wrote: »

Nobody has ever tried to mug me for booze money.

What about publicans?

Mensch Maschine

Adhamh wrote: »

Beer is a culinary thing which gets abused.

Let's put it this way: nobody's ever done a line of coke for the flavour.

Haha, nobody said that. You missed the point completely. And everyone drinks alcohol for flavour. :pac:

Scortho

thebigbiffo wrote: »

:eek:



:rolleyes:



Shocked, confused, incredulous and saddened that in this day and age someone with access to any amount of information on the subject can spew such complete b'ollix.

I, too, am starting to hate these threads. Makes me angry at humanity and the amount of witless people in the world.

I'm looking at this from a gangland crime point of view.
How many people each year get shot/murdered over the legal trade of tobacco and alcohol? Now compare that to gangland murders over drugs!

Yes alcohol and tobacco cause many deaths each year. WHich was the ops point! Everyone's so worried about the effects of drugs but don't seem worried about alcohol and tobacco which cause countless problems each year.

carlmango11

Adhamh wrote: »

Beer is a culinary thing which gets abused.

Let's put it this way: nobody's ever done a line of coke for the flavour.

That's why non-alcoholic beer is so popular.