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Comment by dvh | Hacker News Reader

I'm 39 and I've never drank coffee in my life. As a kid I didn't like what it did to adults ("I cannot work until I have my morning coffee") and from the smell I kinda extrapolated how it tastes like so I didn't need to try it. For me, coffee is like any other drug, it create addictions and should be illegal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

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I'm 41 and I've only tried coffee a few times and really don't like the taste. I don't like what it does to adults ("I cannot work until I have my morning coffee"). For me, coffee is like any other drug, your body, your life, your choice and should be legal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

> For me, coffee is like any other drug, it create addictions and should be illegal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

In what way does someone who drinks coffee or has a beer or a smoke as a responsible adult makes your life or society worse to the point that it warrants being illegal?

No-one's forcing anyone to drink coffee (a very mild stimulant by any standard). No-one dies of passive coffee drinking, no-one kills anyone because they got (or didn't get) their morning coffee, and there is growing evidence that moderate consumption has health benefits.

There are lots of things to say about coffee, some good, some bad, but jeez, that holier-than-thou attitude of wanting to make criminals of basically most of the planet is certainly something...

By the way, tea and sugar are also stimulants, that should take care of the rest of the globe.

It’s evidently good for you when drunk in moderation. Why would you want to ban it? It’s nothing like alcohol or tobacco. It also doesn’t lead to a dose increase or becoming seriously addicted.

For me, coffee isn’t only the welcome stimulant in the morning. It’s also childhood memories of the smell of Sunday morning breakfast at my grandparents’ place.

I guess you don't eat any sugar either?

Also, strange to suggest banning caffeine when discussing a study finding that it reduces risk of death.

Op here. I don't have sugar in my house, haven't had it for years. It's not needed for recipes I use, it's not in bread I bake, I would have no use for sugar.

But sugar is IMHO not mind altering drug like caffeine, sugar is just pure calories.

Not the OP, but indeed I never eat raw sugar nor dissolve it in hot water in order to drink it.

Nobody does that (or almost nobody?). Sugar consumption comes from almost everything nowadays, from white bread to sauces to... everything. Or maybe your comment was ironic and I didn't get it, sorry then.

I didn't go for ironic, but it was meant rhetorically. Attacking the OP by equating coffee intake with sugar intake is a bad faith argument, precisely because sugar is a prevalent food additive while coffee is not. Moreover, the OP clearly said "drinking coffee". not "ingesting coffee/caffeine".

Ever eat at Subway? There's ~9% sugar in just the bread. It's generally safe to extrapolate this as being the case for most ready/packaged/fast food.

In any case, it's very illuminating to look up nutritional info of things you eat every once in a while.

Not the OP, but this comes as a second nature to me. Checking what you put in your body is quite important.

Yes, let's make more substances illegal. It has worked really well in the past.

I understand not liking coffee, but calling for it to be illegal because _you_ don't like it is utter nonsense.

I was with you until.. all drugs should be illegal.

I'm turning 37 this year. And love coffee (medium-roasted arabica is about 99 out of every 100 of my cups), drink it often and feel great.

Don't see any negative impacts on my physical health, and as I enjoy coffee it has a definitely positive impact on my mental health.

Don't have a point to make here, just thought I would dilute this non-coffee drinkers fest.

Hey, while I'm at that, never deleted my FB account. Log in there once a month to see if anyone messaged me, the feed is always full of random crap instead of posts from people I follow -- boring, no idea why people find it so addictive.

> it create addictions and should be illegal

a bit hard to tell how one entails the other

For me, what should be illegal is harming others or compromising their safety under the influence of a drug, like drunk driving, but addiction is a medical problem and addicted people should never feel the need to fear law enforcement if we want them to get better.

Coffee consumption is about as harmless to other humans as you can get.

(Full disclosure: yes, I drink coffee, 95 per cent of it decaf.)

You can get addicted to anything, including things generally considered positive like sport, meditation or charity. Do you want to ban all of that?

As long as it doesn't have negative impact I don't see how "it's addictive to some people" should mean "it should be banned". What matters is how it effects you, not that it does at all.

Let people do what they want within reason. But for me, I've discovered that caffeine isn't helpful to me and I don't need it to function at all; I've only, in the past, been drinking caffeine in softdrinks and coffee because of the marketing of more energy but it doesn't really work for me.

Show me where coffee causes violent or asocial behaviour like alcohol or heroin and I'm with you.

People who haven't had their coffee fix in the morning are not anti-social? And if they have to wait to long (which gives headaches and an overal feeling of malaise in heavy coffee drinkers) they tend to get something I would call violent in the context of an office working environment.

Still, making something illegal never helped and moderation is not something most humans are good at. Everything is addictive and can cause anti-social behaviour (gaming...) and violent or dangerous (for themselves and/or their environment) behaviour up to some extend.

There are studies linking coffee consumption to alcoholism and heroin dependency. The key search terms are harman and norharman.

Coffee -- the ultimate gateway drug! Every cup is a baby-step towards the needle!

Would you be surprised if heroin addicts have chronically high blood harman levels? They do. Two of the most abundant sources in the human diet are coffee and tobacco smoke.

It has been postulated that some alcoholics use alcohol as a means to escape the anxiogenic (anxiety-generating) effects of harman.

I'd trade a coffee addiction for my Coca-Cola addiction in a heartbeat.

I tried coffee again the other week and almost vomited after the first sip. What I did learn is that there are just some things I just don't like, despite my best intentions.

Was it black coffee or latte?

I can't stand black coffee but find soy latte very pleasant to cosume.

> I didn't like what it did to adults

Or perhaps what you saw was the normal effect of aging: decrease in melatonin leading to tiredness in the morning.

> should be illegal

What I hear when you say this is "I don't like it, so nobody should have it". This is egocentric.

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