Alcohol Consumption Should Be Further Restricted

If one were sitting down to design the perfect society from scratch, one might be tempted not to allow the production and sale of alcohol, However, the main reason why the case of alcohol is different from that of other drugs is a social one rather than an empirical fact about the nature of the drug. Alcohol, unlike other drugs, is socially entrenched. It is an integral part of the social life and culture of most countries and to try to ban it is completely impractical. To criminalise billions of people around the world over night and create the biggest black market the world has ever seen (for the benefit of the criminal underworld) would be crazy.

Human beings are naturally inclined towards violence and conflict. Sex and violence are primal parts of our genetic make-up and we do not need alcohol to bring them to the surface. At worst, alcohol may slightly exaggerate these tendencies – but that makes it the occasion not the underlying cause of violent crimes. The underlying causes are biological and social. Making rape and murder illegal does not eradicate rape and murder, so it is unlikely that making drinking alcohol illegal will do so either.

The progress made against drink driving in recent decades has been very encouraging. We should continue to campaign against it and have every reason to hope that the current trend towards its eradication by a process of attitude-change and stigmatisation will continue. The fact that there are still some injuries and deaths is not a good enough reason to take away the civil liberties of the vast majority of law-abiding citizens by depriving them of the pleasure of drinking alcohol.

Yes, we should have consistent drug laws, which is why it is absurd for cannabis to be illegal. Cannabis and alcohol should both be legal drugs since the vast majority of people know how to use them safely and responsibly.

Not only would banning alcohol infringe people’s civil liberties to an unacceptable degree, it would also put thousands of people out of work. The drinks industry is an enormous global industry. There are not good enough reasons for wreaking this havoc on the world economy.

Currently governments raise large amounts of revenue from taxes and duties payable on alcoholic drinks. To ban alcohol would take away a major source of funding for public services. In addition, the effect of banning alcohol would call for additional policing on a huge scale, if the prohibition were to be enforced effectively. If would create a new class of illegal drug-users, traffickers, and dealers on an unprecedented scale.