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Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

I opened with "I'm not proposing doing nothing" - I do think measures to remediate this problem in the short term are a good idea, in line with the fears outlined in your article.

Nothing in your article tackles my main point though?

> the cannabis industry has taken a page from the tobacco and alcohol industries’ play book

As a slightly off-topic aside: tobacco I'm less familiar with (I wasn't aware of efforts by the industry to grow strains of the plants with higher nicotine content but it seems unsurprising), but including alcohol here is bizarre. Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process. And even then, maybe they're talking about distillation, but that process predates the industrial revolution by 100s maybe 1000s of years.

Tbh this throwaway statement kinda makes me question the article...

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> Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process.

Ethanol is naturally occurring.

That said, I agree that including alcohol here is bizarre. As far as I can tell there has never been a monotonic increase in ABV; instead, there is a large selection ranging from high alcohol content to even alcohol-free (which is so unpopular in the US as to be barely worth mentioning, but quite popular in Germany, and I'm now seeing large and even regional breweries in the US produce AF versions of their most popular beers).

> Unless they're talking about distillation

Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process, so I'm not sure what difference you're alluding to here.

> Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process, so I'm not sure what difference you're alluding to here.

Most alcoholic beverages (beers, wines) are not distilled - distillation is typically only used to take a drink above the 20-30% ABV mark (spirit / liquor).

> Most alcoholic beverages are made through some sort of distillation process

How do you define “most”? - but I’m pretty sure non-distilled/non-fortified alcoholic beverages (wine/beer/etc) make up more of the alcoholic beverage market (whether in litres or dollars) than distilled/fortified beverages. I think they also are a lot more if you were to count SKUs (number of varieties of non-fortified wines/beers/etc > spirits/liqueurs/fortified wines/etc)

Oh, okay. Just confusion of terms.

My brain organizes things as "beer, wine, and alcohol (aka spirits)" as opposed to "alcohol, including beer and wine". And an "alcoholic beverage" is just either a spirit alone or a spirit mixed with something.

Probably because that's how my state organizes the stores (with wine/alcohol in separate stores from beer, so if you say "we need to buy beer" that means going to a different place than "we need to by alcohol").

The unambiguous word in these situations is "liquor", at least in US English.

I always thought "liquor" was stuff like Lemoncello and Amaretto.

(FWIW I'm a native US English speaker.)

You may be thinking of liqueur.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liqueur

> a usually sweetened alcoholic liquor (such as brandy) flavored with fruit, spices, nuts, herbs, or seeds

vs liquor

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liquor

> a usually distilled rather than fermented alcoholic beverage

see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amaretto

> an almond-flavored liqueur

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limoncello

> Limoncello (Italian pronunciation: [limonˈtʃɛlːo]) is an Italian lemon liqueur mainly produced in Southern Italy

Yep, liqueur is cutesy syrupy stuff made in european monasteries or whatever, typically around 40 proof. Liquor (as in "corn likker") is the stuff for getting messed up fast, typically at least 80 proof.

“Liquor” has two senses - a narrow sense in which it refers specifically to beverages produced by distillation, and a broader sense in which it refers to alcoholic beverages in general, including wine and beer. The narrow sense is stronger in the US (and I think also Canada?), whereas the broader sense is stronger in the UK and Australia (and I would assume Ireland and New Zealand too)

> Ethanol is naturally occurring.

That's... decidedly not true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95DPkPW5_PE

>> Ethanol is naturally occurring.

> That's... decidedly not true.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95DPkPW5_PE [link to video of animals becoming intoxicated on rotting fruit]

I'm confused. Perhaps you read this as "isn't"?

Indeed I did. Apologies!

> Alcohol isn't naturally occurring in harvested produce - it's an output from a process

Fermentation is a natural process. Alcohol naturally occurs in overripe fruits. Humans first discovered it by accident - fruit juices or grain-water mixtures left out would become alcoholic. In fact, non-fresh non-alcoholic fruit juice only became a product in modern times, because it was only in the modern period we developed the technology to stop the natural process of fermentation.

That said, natural fermentation (without distillation) can only get you up to 18% ABV - beyond that, it poisons the yeast and they stop producing alcohol. To go higher you need distillation/fortification.

I suspect it's a reference to the shift in preference for hard liquor over beer that happened in the US as a result of prohibition, liquor being easier to smuggle due to lower volumes. That preference persisted for some decades after prohibition ended, but arguably has turned around by now.

In that case, that would reinforce my instinct. There's certainly a recent cocktail boom, and there was a brief trend of straight vodka being popular with girls my age when I was in college, but these are passing market phases, not something systemic in the industry. By-and-large ~5% beers and ~12% wines are the popular choice today.

It seems like the biggest growth in the industry is in hard seltzers/alcopops, which range from 4-12%, but mostly on the lower end. So it does seem like in general there's a preference for strengths in a range of beer - craft beer - wine.

Probably one of the best trends towards weight loss in the general public. Beer is often an underrated contributor to weight gain with all of the social aspects.

Speaking of trends, there's currently a trend in beer world where I am in "low-ABV" and "0.0" products. Not sure if it'll be lasting, but I guess that along with the emergence of some things like 0% wines and even "spirits" (distilled botanical infusions) is further anecdata.

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